


time's supposed to heal you (but i ain't done much healing)

by Valkyrees



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Bad Decisions, Drinking, F/F, Fluff, Smut, This is going to have a lot of angst, kara is gonna be soft it's her only way, kara owns a hardware store, lena's trying to process some shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-01-16 06:49:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21266822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valkyrees/pseuds/Valkyrees
Summary: -Lena doesn't have any regrets in life, not ever, but she does regret leaving Metropolis before her mind actually left Metropolis. She regrets messing things up with Sam and looking desperate in front of Kara, and fucking up again and again and again, andgod, truthfully, she probably has more regrets than she has anything else. But she doesn't regret ending up in Midvale. She doesn't regret being in the one place that's allowed her to finally admit she wants to be happy. She doesn't regret being in the one place that gave her someone who finallygetsher.OR,au; Lena loses herself in a small town and finds Kara Danvers in the process.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i really don't have any business posting another work in progress, but i've been massively scatter-brained and i'm just going where what i want to write takes me. if it sounds good, i roll with it, and i really liked how this was sounding.
> 
> this idea originally came from [THIS](https://valkyrieskwad.tumblr.com/post/188698622082/are-you-still-taking-prompts-how-about-a-no) on tumblr; someone submitted this prompt to me--a no powers au where lena is left with an old run down victorian style house in a small and secluded town by her biological mother. found out only when being excommunicated by the luthors. kara runs the danvers' harware shop and also is the town's handyman/carpenter. lena is stubborn and won't ask for help but kara works her dowm with her charm after many frustrating trips to the store and running to her around town.
> 
> annnnnnd this is what came of it. not to do too much in the notes, but thanks everyone, again, for reading and leaving feedback and sending me prompts and constantly inspiring me. i appreciate you all. lots of love <3 <3 <3
> 
> title from _hello_ by Adele of course
> 
> I'm on [TUMBLR](https://valkyrieskwad.tumblr.com/) and [TWITTER](https://twitter.com/VaIkyrieSquad). Come hang out with me!
> 
> <3

**Tuesday, October 29th, 2019**

It's raining. In the most torrential sense of the word, the clouds are spurting droplets like water from a busted fire hydrant.

It's like the sky's opened up, vast and ominous--a sea of smoky-black desolation and lightening strikes--and god's decided to dump all his tears right in the middle of Bumfuck-Nowhere, California.

It's the maraschino cherry on top of the shit-milkshake that Lena Luthor's life has been; just her luck that the weather picked _today_ of all days to conjure up a hurricane, to flash-flood the roads and blur all visibility, to dish out what the radio is referring to as the _worst storm since 1972_.

She's got sixty-eight dollars in her wallet, six final notices in her passenger seat, and four letters from the _City of Midvale_ telling her she has eight weeks todo something about her childhood home, or else they'll condemn it.

But none of that matters at the moment, because five minutes ago she _hydroplaned_, and now she's parked on the side of the road hyperventilating against her steering wheel. Because it's raining; it's fucking raining--end of the world, apocalyptic, fist-sized hail raining--and she _can't_ get through it driving a _2003 Toyota Camry_ with no traction on the tires, one headlight, and finicky wipers. _Jesus fuck_, she knew it was a shit purchase the moment she was handed the keys and the salesman all but laughed and said _no take backs_.

But it was the only thing she could afford on the used car lot, since she's fresh out of luck, influence, and most importantly--_money_. Since _god_ decided it was okay to kick her while she's already down, and then kick her once again for good measure.

Since five weeks ago her life was completely up-rooted and she doesn't have shit to show for her accomplishments, except the fact that Lillian couldn't actually take away her _PhD_ when she eviscerated all her job opportunities.

So there's that, at least--she's educated and unemployable, and stuck half-way between _nothing for two-hundred miles_ and Midvale while mother nature tries her best to rattle her out of this car. She's also sad and defeated and definitely crying, and immeasurably impressed with her life's ability to somehow drop even lower than rock-fucking-bottom.

> ** _New York Times_ **
> 
> _September 4, 2019_
> 
> _BREAKING NEWS: Prosecutors Bring First Charges Against Those Connected to Illegal Activities Revealed by LuthorCorp Leak_
> 
> _Federal prosecutors in Metropolis unsealed an indictment on Thursday that contained the first charges brought against Lex Luthor in connection with the now-infamous LuthorCorp Documents._
> 
> _The indictment, which a grand jury returned in mid August, names four individuals connected with LuthorCorp and its subsidiaries, whose activities were laid bare in the leak. The individuals were charged with tax fraud, money laundering and other crimes as part of alleged schemes that stretch back nearly a decade. Three of the individuals have been arrested. _
> 
> _The fourth person, Lex Luthor, himself, remains at large._
> 
> _Sources say that Lena Luthor -- partial owner of LuthorCorp, and adoptive sister to Lex Luthor -- is the one responsible for originally leaking the incriminating documents. However, this information has yet to be officially confirmed. _

It's an hour before she's able to clear her head and stop the tears from falling. Then it's another ten minutes before her chest stops shaking and her hands stop trembling, and she's able to _think_ about moving again.

Something must click inside of her that _she doesn't want to die alone on the side of the road_, because her brain kicks into high-gear trying to figure how to navigate with no visibility, no map, and four inches of water coating every inch of the surrounding road.

It doesn't take long for her to realize that, even considering all her _best_ options, she still doesn't have a _good_ one.

She doesn't have anything that puts her at favorable odds of making it out alive or, at the very least, anything that guarantees she _won't_ have an accident; that she won't end up off-road in a ditch somewhere or against a tree in a patch of forestry, end up in places where no one will ever know to look for her.

She can't think of any situation where she actually _drives_ through this safely. So she decides she'll stick to where she's at, wait it out, keep her head down. She'll shove her hands between her thighs, curl her shoulders forward, tuck her nose in her sweater, and _pray--_pray as much as she can that things will work out, that she'll be okay, that she makes it out of this god-forsaken rain to lead whatever _shitty_ life she still can.

And it's funny, really, that her best plan of action is to seek out help from the big man Himself. Especially considering He's never really done much for her, and she's never really done much for _Him_, and it's been more than a decade since she's even been to church or said a proper prayer.

But it's... it's all she has left, if she's honest with herself.

So she'll give it her best shot.

> _ **New York Times** _
> 
> _September 15, 2019_
> 
> _"Any decision to report any perceived identifying information of the whistle-blower is deeply concerning and reckless, as it can place the individual in harm’s way," said George Castellanos, lead prosecuting attorney. "The whistle-blower has a right to anonymity, and fabricating stories about Lena Luthor as the whistle-blower is both highly irresponsible and potentially dangerous for her life."_

_Crack!_

Lena jolts out of her nap and blinks her eyes open at the noise, shoulders jumping back hard enough to cramp her stiff neck.

At first she assumes the hail is finally breaking through the windshield, but then she hears it again, loud and ear-shattering and unmistakenly coming from the window to the left of her, followed by a voice shouting, "Are you okay in there?"

"What?" she asks, too low for even someone _in the car_ to hear it, brain catching up to the fact that she's not asleep and she's not just _hearing things_, and fuck, god, _fuck_.

She's half-frozen from the temperature steadily dropping, and half-horrified by the fact that someone's legitimately outside her window, but her heart is pounding now, squeezing blood through her so fast she's getting jittery. So she's alert enough to let her mind flick through her options here. She's not quite sure if she _should_ speak louder, confirm she's alive and well, if she should bother answering the question at all, but. _God_, if the radio was correct about this being a multi-day storm, her _best_ options right now are freeze to death, get smacked by a car speeding down the road, or stay stranded for the next two days surviving on pure faith and luck.

And she really doesn't like _any_ of those. So she huffs against the cold air in the car, chants _i'm okay i'm okay i'm okay it's okay we're okay_ in her mind, and then starts rolling down her window. All the while positively _dreading _the possibilities for who's actually outside of it, because _who_ in their right mind stops roadside to check on a car in the middle of an actual hurricane-related storm?

Oh. Apparently tall girls with messy blonde curls and bright blue eyes and plump bottom lips they like to nibble. That's who.

"Hey, are you okay?" the girl asks again, peeking her head in the car window, and Lena's ashamed at how her brain goes blank. How she barely even notices the rain splashing inside the car, soaking her sweater and everything else in the interior. How her heart stutters over itself like a fish fluttering on land.

This girl is stunning--even though she's wet and shivering, even though she's blanketed in a hooded black rain poncho and pale against the wet blur of the background--she's striking enough that Lena has to pinch her thigh to make sure she's not hallucinating. It's been at least a few years since she's seen someone _this_ pretty, and even then, she's fairly confident it was someone airbrushed in a magazine and not in _real life_.

She doesn't even want to ask if she's being kidnapped at this point; all she really cares to know is _where _they're going and if there'll be food there, even if she has to eat it out of a dirty bucket at the bottom of a containment hole.

"It's not safe right here," the girl says, still trying to get through to Lena, even though it's obvious she's brain-dead. "It's a crap place in the highway. There's a lot of dips and turns and it's hard to navigate even in mild weather. Is there something wrong with your car?"

"You could say that," Lena says, feeling her sleeves slick to her arms from all the water slathering against them. "Got it for four-hundred dollars, so it probably couldn't navigate a straight road in sunny weather." 

"Can never trust a bargain, can you?" The gorgeous girl has a gorgeous smile, eyes flickering like the sun shines off ice, even in the dull-gray of the rain. "I have my jeep; it's all-terrain—been trekking through the storm just fine. The only thing in the direction you're headed is Midvale. If that's where you're going, I'm headed there, too."

"Yeah, I - I'm headed that way. I have my stuff in the trunk, though," Lena says, and has to bite her lip because an unexpected wave crashes through her. Because she has everything of value she still has left shoved in _one_, singular suitcase in the back of the world's shittiest excuse for motor-transportation. "I don't want to just leave it here, y'know?"

"Yeah, of course," the girl says, tapping her umbrella against the top of the door. "We can grab it and load it in the jeep, then we can head out? Kara Danvers, by the way. Excuse my manners."

"Lena Lu--_Kieran_," Lena says. "I'm Lena Kieran, nice to meet you." And, _fuck_, she god-honest doesn't want to stay in this car, so she says, "Sure, um, yeah. I'd love to get someplace safer than this. Mind holding the umbrella over the door while I get out?"

Kara _laughs_, unexpectedly, a short burst of a noise, but still _warm_ and full and friendly in the cruelty of the weather. She's like a streak of sunshine cutting through the rain, like a double rainbow at the end of the storm. Her laugh infectious like something Lena wants to join in on, like something Lena's _welcome_ to join in on.

Which is new, since she's been the outcast pretty much from start to _now_ in her life.

"Of course, 'm not a barbarian, Lena Kieran," Kara assures her, standing up straighter and taking a step back like she's indicating Lena can open the door now. "I'll even walk you to the jeep and grab your things out myself. Midvale isn't short on hospitality."

That one gets a small smile out of Lena, a genuine one, which is embarrassing enough she feels herself flushing when she ducks her head. She doesn't know what to say to that, so she rolls up the window without responding, then opens the door, grabs the keys from the ignition, and steps out.

The rain is worse on the outside, louder and colder than it was splashing into the car. Still pelting Lena even under the umbrella, since it's somehow flying in sideways.

But it's a non-factor, in her head, because now that she's standing she can appreciate just _how_ tall Kara is, how big her hands are wrapped around the umbrella stem, how she's radiating enough heat that Lena feels like she could warm herself from proximity.

She's a devil in a Sunday hat, if Lena's ever seen one. Like she wouldn't be surprised if she ended up in the middle of cornfield after this, chained to a tractor or some shit while _Fortune Son_ plays on an old-time radio in the background.

She'd bet her entire sixty-eight dollars this ends terribly, but she's still willing to take that chance.

"How far out is Midvale?" She asks, converse covered in mud and water as she sinks in the sludge on the side of the road, bad luck even further confirming her barn-tractor-fate. No chance in the universe Kara's _not_ dangerous. 

"It's an hour and a half, just about," Kara says, tucking her hand underneath Lena's elbow to carefully lead her through the water, tall boots glimmering as the rain bounces from them. _Smart, sensible, too cute to exist_. If she quacks like a duck, then she's definitely a killer. "I can drive you anywhere you want, it's no problem. If you need, I can even get you a room at Joslyn's free of charge. I fixed her radiator last winter, so she has a bit of a soft spot for me."

"Good with your hands then?" Lena asks, and then grimaces. She hasn't had an actual conversation with another human in at least six days, and it shows. "I mean, with fixing things?"

She takes a step without watching her feet, nearly slips on a particularly muddy patch, but Kara's fingers grip her tighter and catch her just in time. It takes every inch of her to swallow it down, to shake off how dumb she feels, to not lie down in the water and just let it cover her until she stops existing.

"Yep," Kara says brightly, waiting for Lena to reorient herself, but otherwise not commenting on it. "I like to think I'm modest most days of the week, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a handywoman as good as I am. Even in the _city_, assuming that's where you're from?"

Where she's _from_? Lena chews on that and thinks, technically, she's from Midvale. But that's a thought she swallows down faster than Lillian ended her life, and goes with, "Metropolis, yeah, first time coming out here."

"I guess this isn't really a great welcome, but it _is_ a great town," Kara says, and Lena can start to make out the outline of her jeep as they walk closer, rain still splashing at every inch of her like the umbrella means nothing to it. At least Kara wasn't lying about what she was driving, though. A good sign. "I can tell you about it on the ride there, or be silent if that's more your thing."

"You're a little friendly, aren't you?" Lena comments, since they're two minutes in and it feels like Kara's about to tell her where her mother stores the _good_ china. "We're wary of that, where I'm from."

"We just call it being a _decent human being_, where I'm from," Kara laughs, dropping her hand to the small of Lena's back once they're at the passenger side. Almost _too_ intimate a gesture, if Lena weren't currently staring at the step-up onto the jeep and worrying about face-planting. "Hear being mean is the new _couture_ in the city, though. So I'll make sure to criticize your hair or something before the ride's over. If it makes you feel safe."

"If you really wanted me to feel safe, you wouldn't criticize it, you'd just frown while slowly nodding and say _well, that's... different_," Lena comments. "There's an art to being mean, have to do it just right."

She turns in time to catch Kara wink, watch her face split in half as a grin spreads across it. "Well, I can already tell you're a whole lot of different," she says. "But I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. I'll frown at you anyway, though. Because who looks this great covered in rain water?"

"Shut up," Lena laughs, digging her nails in her palm to keep herself from swatting at Kara's arm. She doesn't know this girl and they should _not_ be this comfortable with each other. Cornfield. She's going to end up in the middle of a cornfield. She's seen this movie play out a million times. "Help me into the jeep, yeah? We should get out of here."

"I'm sorry," Kara says, slurred around her smile. "Couldn't help it. It's like you were just _asking_ for a compliment, and I think it's in my nature more to be nice than it is to be mean." She pauses a second and something more serious settles over her face. "But I'm really just trying to help, if that wasn't clear. I'm not asking for anything from you."

"Okay," Lena says, heart fluttering since she can't handle how _sincere_ Kara looks, how she's the first person Lena's seen, in a very, very long time, do or say something selfless and actually radiate with every inch of their presence that they _mean_ it. "Yeah, sure, and I thank you, really, was freezing my ass off in that car. But the temperature isn't any better out here, so can you help me out of this rain, please? I think I'm stuck in a mud puddle, and I'd rather not fall on my face in front of a _kind_ stranger."

"Right, of course, would never let you fall," Kara says, and then she helps Lena inside, keeping one hand on her to steady her the whole way, while also keeping the umbrella perfectly positioned. It's like they built her in a lab somewhere, like a _Black Mirror_ episode for a _Perfect Mate_ robot. "I'll grab your stuff from the trunk and be right back, feel free to turn on the heat if you need it."

Then she's off, just like that, leaves her keys in the ignition and everything, a professional move if Lena's ever seen one. She's building up trust, making sure Lena's comfortable before she saws her head off or skins her alive.

Lillian probably sent her, the more likely option, knows exactly how to get to Lena, how to get her guard down. She's probably decided, finally, that not wanting Lena around means _not_ having her around. 

Which makes Lena dream about the time when the worst she had to fear was a cornfield.

Lena's therapist used to say that well-adjusted people are like onions. They let everyone in a little bit, always filling up their top layer; then they let less into their second layer, even less into their third, and the number dwindles down more and more the deeper you go.

She said well-adjusted people can _decide_ which layer to let you to, acknowledging and accepting that not all people will make it to the center. _I__t's fine to have people on the outer layers_, she'd say. _It's fine to let someone down a layer and realize you need to move them back up. That's healthy._

People who are less adjusted are more like golf balls, she'd say afterwards. A golf ball is _hard_, solid, nothing cracks through it's surface, no one gets in. And when someone finally gets a drill just to penetrate it... they're immediately at its center.

Lena's therapist always said that _she_ was the golf ball.

That she didn't let anyone in, and when she did it was_ all the way_. Said that Lena needed to work on layering and being open, but also shielding herself. Said that Lena could unpack her past and learn skills for the future in their sessions, but--

Lena lost her therapist when she lost everything else.

So she's still a golf ball, hard until she's squishy with no protection. And, while she's only been in the car with Kara for approximately forty-seven minutes, she can already tell that she's a drill. 

She's charismatic and energetic and she put on the most adorable glasses the moment they started driving. She's beautiful and nice and pauses when Lena speaks, and her eyes haven't left the road during any of the six stories she's told.

She's exactly the sort of thing Lena _wasn't_ searching for, and now she's trapped in a car with her.

> _ **New York Times** _
> 
> _September 23, 2019_
> 
> _Instead of stepping up as chief executive of LuthorCorp, as was previously expected, it appears that Lena Luthor may be making a quiet exit from the multi-billion dollar company. Sources speculate it may have to do with allegations of Luthor being the whistle-blower for the take-down of her brother. However, the company remains mysteriously quiet about the circumstances of Luthor's exit._

"So that's the history of why Midvale has one of the best libraries in the country," Kara finishes her story, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. The heat's blasting hard enough that Lena's mostly dry now, but there's something comforting about the sting of it, so she hasn't asked Kara to turn it down yet. "Up for another, or you tired of my voice yet?"

Truthfully, Lena could listen to her speak all day. It's the only comfort she's had in weeks, but she does't want to sound weird about it, so she nods and hums in response, then, "Yeah," she says, voice low and sleepy, fingers scratching at the fabric of her pants. "I wanna hear something like - tell me something the towns' people _don't_ want to get out. You have any weird town secrets? All the small towns do in the movies."

"Um," Kara says, biting her lip like this is the most important thing she's ever been tasked with. "Well, it's not really a _secret_ per se, but it was kind of a big thing that happened, if you wanna hear about it?"

"Lay it on me," Lena says, pressing her eyes closed and smiling.

She can still hear the drum of Kara's thumbs against the steering wheel as she explains, "We have this old house on the outskirts of town--big and beautiful, _Victorian_, completely abandoned--and it's a bit of a, well, I guess we made it a big deal as kids."

"Oh yeah?" Lena asks, eyes shooting open, body perking up from where she was dozing off against the window. That sounds like an exact description of her mother's house. Except it doesn't make sense it's a part of _something scandalous_. "What's the story there?"

"The original story is pretty tragic," Kara says, clearing her throat like she's gearing up for a big one. "It's not like _just _a campfire tale, or anything, it actually happened--a mom and her daughter lived there a while ago, and one day the mom drowned in the lake in the woods out back. People say the little girl saw the whole thing, but don't know if that part's true." Kara shivers like saying it gives her the chills, and Lena's heart stops dead in her chest. "Either way, I was too young to remember myself, but growing up all the older kids would say the mom's spirit still haunted the house. So we'd go on Halloween and camp out there. Real creepy stuff, like all the pictures were still on the walls."

"They are?" Lena asks, throat suddenly dry enough she has half-a-mind to stick her head out in the rain.

"Well, they _were_, not so sure anymore. Few years ago some kids broke in and vandalized the whole place. So now animals get in and--it's sad, honestly, since it was actually a beautiful house. I offered Billy I'd fix it up for minimal pay, but he said can't touch it. The deed's in the name of the little girl, _er_, guess she'd be big now. Think they've been trying to contact her for a while, said her name was, _god_, I can't remember it. Started with a like, um--_oh_."

Kara pauses with her mouth hanging open, fingers freezing on the wheel, the air getting sucked clean from between them, more and more suffocating with each minute they let past.

She knows.

Lena can see it in her eyes that it's registered.

She switched from Luthor to Kieran because it was her mother's last name, but she supposes it was _hers_, too, back when she lived in Midvale. She supposes most the town knows her name if they stop to think about it hard enough.

Still, the silence stretches on and on and on between them, then, finally, after a small eternity, Lena whispers, "It's okay. It's why I'm here."

"Oh my god, I'm an idiot," Kara gasps. "God, I wasn't - I wasn't even thinking, and it was so obvious. I'm so sorry. Lena Kieran. _Lena Kieran. _Your name was even all over the newspapers when we looked up the history in the library as kids, and--I'm so sorry. I knew it sounded familiar, but I just thought it was a coincidence. I wasn't trying to be _rude_, I--"

"It's okay," Lena interrupts her, resting her head against the cool glass of the window again. "You couldn't have known."

"I - m'just really, _very_ sorry," Kara says, and then she gets _quiet _quiet, awkward and fidgety.

Lena tries her best to stop her mind from swirling, to stop the dull ache building behind her temples just thinking about the fact that her house was vandalized and her mother was reduced to childrens' horror stories. Thinking about glass breaking as the pictures crash against the floor, thinking about years of memories being obliterated with no one there to appreciate them. Thinking about the fact that she can't - can't _stomach_ even thinking about the house right now, let alone _seeing_ it. 

She can't. She can't do it.

"When we get there," she whispers. "Just drop me off at... Joslyn's was it? If it's fine with her, I'll stay there for a bit."

"Okay," Kara says, timid for the first time since Lena met her an hour ago, like she's afraid to pierce the air with her voice, like all it took was a few minutes with Lena for her soul to be broken.

That's how it always goes, though, isn't it? Lena only exists to break things in a way that can't be fixed, burns everything she touches like her fingertips are laced with fire. Kara Danvers was never the person to fear in this situation, it was always _her_, because _s__he's_ the roadside stranger that can't be trusted. Not the other way around.

Lena starts to open her mouth to say just drop her off, just leave her on the side of the road and let her walk to Midvale, covered in her sadness and misery and _rain_.

But before she can, Kara tightens her grip on the wheel--pink fingers and white knuckles and flexed biceps--and says, with as much confidence as Lena's ever heard someone speak with, "It'll be fine. I swear. I'll make sure it is."


	2. Chapter 2

She wakes up stiff from a nightmare, eyes springing open just to realize the gunshots from her dream were synching up with _bam bam bam_ of the hail smashing against the hard metal of the jeep.

_I'm okay_, she tells herself, hands instinctively feeling her belly where the wound had pierced. _It was a dream, there's nothing there, i'm okay._

But she's still getting the images flicking through her head of blood sticky on her skin, still feels like her heart racing, gunshots still ringing loud and sharp through her eardrums. Except it's not real. There's no gun and no wound and no blood.

There's just the rain. Her, Kara, the rain, the jeep, and her skin still intact to live out her shit life.

It takes her a second to properly orient herself, to get herself to calm down and release the last remnants of the nightmare, but once she does she notices they're _stopped_ somewhere. She also notices the jeep is off, has to be, since she can't feel the rumble of the engine or the burn from the heat lingering too long on her skin.

She's cold and _still_ damp, she notes bitterly, and Kara's wringing her hands together with a curious crinkle between her eyebrows. Something's definitely wrong, and it's not looking great if the picture of bright smiles and happy tales herself is this worked-up about it.

Lena stretches out her arm lazily to announce she's awake before she asks, "Everything okay?"

"Hey," Kara says, turning towards her, voice so soft Lena can feel herself melt a little. Feels it even more when Kara's face brights up like she's a mom putting on a big smile for the little ones. Pretending the family isn't going through a crisis and this is _just_ the perfect night for a long, sweet bedtime story. "You sleep okay? Didn't want to wake you, looked like you hadn't had rest in a while. I don't mean that as a criticism, either, just that. You looked tired."

"I _am_ tired," Lena says, sharper than she intends to, folding in on herself because she doesn't like being judged. Especially by overly presumptuous small-town strangers. "And it has nothing to do with the amount of sleep I'm getting. What's wrong here? Why are we stopped?"

"I think you had the right idea stopping earlier," Kara says, not fazed even a little bit by Lena spitting fire at her. Nibbling her lip afterwards like growing up in a small town never taught her how distracting that is; like it's fair she's leaving teeth marks in something that pink and pretty. "I nearly slid a while back, can't see anything in this rain. I think the animals are getting out. I might've rolled over something. Goat, maybe? It's not flooded in this area, but there're a lot of farms with weak fences. So we should keep it safe while we can."

"Jesus Christ," Lena swallows. "How'd you know it's not a human? What if it was a human?"

"Good question," Kara says, and then she just looks at Lena a second, eyes big and lit from somewhere sunny inside her, like she could clear the weather if she thought hard enough about it. "Two things, really: pretty sure it was already dead when I rolled it over, and B—if he was out here alone, on_ this_ stretch of road, he was probably up to no good, anyway. We did the world a service with that one."

"It could have been a farmer," Lena gasps, realizing too late Kara's just _fucking with her_. So now she's stuck in a too-small space with Kara's overwhelmingly perfect laugh, and her crystal clear blue eyes glimmering in a way that's entirely unfair. And just. What-the fuck-ever, Lena doesn't have time for cornfield humor. "So, we're stuck?"

"We’re okay," Kara says,_ calm_, so fucking calm it resonates somewhere deep inside Lena and pokes at something it has no business touching.

It catches her off guard enough, she ducks her head lower, reflexively, and clicks her teeth together. "How do I know that?"

"I heard it on the radio, before I turned the car off. We drove enough we're out of the main trajectory of the larger storm. So we just have to wait for this rain to pass, and we're home-free."

"Why were you so upset, then?" Lena asks, because Kara's good but Lena's not dumb. She knows enough to pick up when someone's putting on a front. "When I first woke up?"

"You're shivering," Kara says, and it nearly sounds like a deflection, but Lena _is _shivering, and Kara also follows it up with, "I don't know if we have enough gas or battery to leave the car running, since we still have a good amount of drive before Midvale. Had to go so slow in the rain, you know? But you're cold and. I also don't want you to be cold."

"I'm not cold," Lena says, fingers curling tight around each other like they're ashamed of her lie. "I'm fine, just want to get through the rain, and then you can drop me off. And I'm—we're done with this."

"Right," Kara says, nods once, then presses her lips together. "So, I'm gonna climb into the back seat, where there's more room. And I'm just gonna sit there, calm, no sudden movements. And if you'd like to join. That's okay. If you want to stay up front, that's okay too."

Lena thinks about that for all of a second, and snaps, "I don't know you," hard enough Kara pokes her hands in the air.

"Fair enough, I get that." Then she tilts her head from side-to-side and sucks in a deep breath. "Um, I'm Kara Danvers, like I told you earlier. I own Danvers' hardware in town, good place when you need it. I have a sister, her name's Alex. Best doctor in town. I'm also adopted, but that's a story you'd need to buy me a drink for. Is that enough, or?"

Lena shifts in her seat, clenching and unclenching her jaw until she decides, "You didn't have to tell me all that."

Kara shrugs. "You're cold, like I said. I'm also somewhat of an open book, or at least Alex always says I am."

"I'm not getting in the back of this jeep with you, Kara, I'm sure of that. So don't press me."

"At least give me your hands," Kara says, undoing her seat belt so she can turn her shoulders toward Lena and stick out her own hands. "I'll warm them up, and you can have them back. Then we can sit in silence like we both hate human interaction, and I'll drop you off in town and pretend you don't exist. That make you happy?"

"Ecstatic," Lena says, but her hands are so cold they hurt, so she's really in no position to fight. So she moves them, reluctantly, from between her wet thighs and turns in her seat too, shifting forward so she can put them in Kara's outstretched palms, right above the center console. "Just until they're warm, okay?"

"Until they're warm," Kara parrots, and like the annoying smudge that she is she doesn't reach up to take them, just flexes her thumbs like she wants Lena to come all the way to her. This is an awful idea. "It's alright, take your time."

"Don't be weird about this," Lena says, dropping her hands down, hating the way she swallows when her fingers brush over Kara's palms. Which are somehow soft and rougher than sandpaper at the same time, warm and slightly damp and perfect. "Just a few minutes."

"Just a few minutes, all I need."

"_Don't_ be weird about this," Lena warns again, and Kara nods like she gets it.

Which is good; Lena hopes she fucking gets it.

"They're cold as ice," Kara comments, letting Lena's hands just rest on hers as she looks them over. "These are working hands, though, I can tell that much," she adds, cupping Lena's hands between her own, tracing her thumbs across the lines of Lena's palms, and, _god_. She such an asshole. "Let me guess. It's not wood, is it? You do some work with metal?"

"Engineer," Lena tells her, and for some reason adds, "MIT."

Kara's eyes light up as soon as she says it. "Nice, that's some fancy _state_ school, right?"

"Stop," Lena snorts, can't help herself. "You said that on purpose, and you know it. I make drones, _made_. And we can get them mass produced, sure, but there's nothing like being on the floor, putting it together yourself, seeing first hand what - what makes it _tick_, you know?"

"No one that gets that excited about birds should be making them in past tense."

"It's complicated."

"We have time, and I have your hands, so--"

"So, that means nothing," Lena interrupts, shifting and making herself comfortable. Then, against everything inside of her, she lets her hands relax in Kara's. "I'm not ready to talk about it, and that's as open as I'll be with you."

"You're a stiff drink, aren't you?" Kara says, dumb smile glued to her face in _such_ a smug way, she'd probably get away with that line in even the high-class bars in the city.

She took her poncho off before they got back on the road, and her flannel off since it was sopping wet. So now she's just in a black, long-sleeved _underarmour_, and she's definitely never missed an arm day at the gym.

Lena keeps noticing little things because she _keeps_ staring, like the scar on her eyebrow, or the way her face really opens up when her glasses are off. She notices how her lips are chapped and the way she licks them like she's self-conscious about it.

"I suppose we could have a staring contest?" Kara offers, and Lena blinks her eyes away fast enough to be too obvious. This is literally the car ride from hell, she should submit it as a Stephen King story. "You seem good at that. Winner buys the other breakfast in the morning."

"I said don't make this weird," Lena repeats again, mentally checking if her eyes are too dry or if she can actually win this.

"I'm not," Kara says, slow and smooth, and Lena knows she's already lost. "Hank's is the best and only diner in town, and it's also where Joslyn's gonna point you for food once you're awake. We'll see each other there, and maybe I'll buy you a stack of pancakes and maybe you'll tell me more about making drones." She ducks her head so she's in Lena's line of sight again. "And not the bad bits, just the stuff that makes your eyes light up. That's all I'm interested in, anyway."

God, fuck. Apparently Kara doesn't just cross lines, she leaps right over them. _Drill_, Lena says in her head, _she's a drill a fucking drill._ Sure, she never properly learned what to do when she encountered one, but she had at least one session on _spotting_ them. 

So.

She says, "This is dumb, but I guess there's nothing else to do, so. Alright, let's have a staring contest."

"Alright, let's have it, then," Kara says, always repeating Lena's words back at her, slow and drawn out and making them something that they're _not_. "When you say go, we start. First one to blink loses, and they have to foot the bill. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Lena mumbles. This is so dumb, she hates it. But she sighs and says, "Go," anyway, and then Kara blinks half-a-second second later, and Lena can't stop the gasp that escapes her throat. "What the hell?"

"Think I owe you breakfast now," Kara says, easy as anything, and before Lena can protest or demand a second round, she asks, "Do you hear that?"

"No? Hear what?"

"Exactly. Guess we only needed to wait a couple minutes for the rain to stop."

> _ **BuzzFeed News** _
> 
> _October 5, 2019_
> 
> _Tech News: The Rise and Fall of Lena Luthor, an Unfortunate Blow to Innovation_
> 
> _Once upon a time, back in the old days of 2012, a young engineer, just shy of twenty-years old, was handed the reigns to the tech-department of the largest and most influential corporation in American history. And then she did what no one else in the world could do--she made our collective jaws drop for the first time since Steve Jobs pulled the MacBook Air out of an office mail envelope._
> 
> _So she was named the best, and she was celebrated, and the world loved her--at least for a while._
> 
> _She made state of the art technology, everything from software to planes to drones. She even dabbled in biology and consulted with the CDC about vaccinations. Lena Luthor did it all and could do no wrong._
> 
> _And just this week, she was seen exiting her lavish loft amidst all her belongings being confiscated, in what may be the biggest public shaming of the decade. How did she get here, you may ask? Well, it all started with something we've all heard of--_
> 
> _The LuthorCorp Documents._

**Joslyn's Bed & Breakfast** is plastered in bold on the welcome sign as Kara pulls Lena's suitcase from the back of the jeep in the parking lot, letters black against a dim-white glow. Part of Lena wants to ask what's the _breakfast _option if she'll just send Lena to _Hank's_.

But she doesn't. Doesn't because if she knows one thing about herself, it's that she loves a good _drill_ in her life. And Kara seems like just the kind of heartbreak that's right up her alley. Just the kind of long night that leaves Lena reeling and wishing she knew how to do something other than fuck things up for herself. Mostly, though, Kara feels like just the distraction she needs from her self-hate and bad dreams and the awful taste she gets in her mouth whenever she stops to think too long.

It's like there's been a weight on her chest, like every conversation she had before she shut herself off was just a regurgitation of information in headlines. Like everyone felt the need to be a constant reminder of what the public was speculating, and--

_God_, it feels like Kara doesn't even know what the New York Times _is_, let alone gives a rats ass about rich daughters and multi-billion dollar companies. And that's exactly what Lena needs right now. In fact, _this town_ might be exactly what Lena needs right now. Some place that couldn't give two fucks who she is or what she's here for. Some place that might let her disappear and be the weird _city gal_.

Some place where handywomen endanger themselves just to flirt a little and buy her pancakes.

She figures she has eight weeks to do something about the house, so she has eight weeks to be here. And maybe making a friend isn't so bad. And maybe finding a home where her mother once did isn't so bad either.

"We should get you into something dry," Kara says, knocking her suitcase against her leg, nudging her along toward the entrance of the B&B. "I mean, not _we_, just a figure of speech. Just meant it's probably a good idea to change."

"I know what you meant," Lena says, feeling less and less like giving Kara shit, the heavier her eyes get.

"I'll talk to Joslyn, get you set-up upstairs, and make sure she puts something on so you get some food in your system." Kara says, just outside the door, pausing to lean her shoulder against the dark wood. "I know what _dead_ tired looks like, and--I know it offends you when I say it, but--you could use a good night of sleep."

"I can take care of myself," Lena says, the last bit of fight she has left in her. She's tired enough she feels like collapsing, but she couldn't live it down if she left this whole thing with Kara thinking she needs to be looked after. She needs to be fucked, maybe, entertained, something that makes her _forget_, makes the wounds stop bleeding. But she doesn't need to be taken care of. She can do that badly all by herself. "Thanks for the ride, really, but it doesn't make us any less of strangers to each other."

"Okay," Kara says, then she shrugs her shoulder off the door and steps to the side, flashing Lena one last unwanted spark of _blue_, before she grins. "I can take a hint when it's slapped in my face. But I'll be at the diner tomorrow, anyway. Bright and early and ready to buy you pancakes, if you decide it's okay I stop being a stranger. If not, just pretend I'm not there."

"Alright," Lena mumbles, and fuck, Kara just looks so soft and pretty and _dangerous_. So much so that Lena just wants to reach out and touch her in that masochistic way of hers, wishes she could pull her in until their bodies are pressed together.

Not so much in a sexual way, she just wants... to be touched? Maybe. To be held or to feel warm all over the way her hands did when Kara engulfed hers in her sandpaper palms. She'd like to be _engulfed_ in Kara, which is probably a sleepy, desperate thought. But she's in a small town so far away from anything she knows that Kara hasn't even mentioned one of the six articles written about her in _People Magazine_. So she doesn't even consider taking the out, not even for a second.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then," she goes with, chewing on her cheek and scraping her muddy converse against that back of her jeans. "And, again, for the love of god _please _don't make this weird, okay?"

"Okay," Kara says, and because she's the devil herself, red-hot and in the flesh, she reaches over and swipes the stray strands of Lena's messy hair behind her ear, thumb streaking hot against Lena's cheek, before she adds, "I'm not trying to make this anything you don't want it to be."

She lets Kara check her in and talk to Joslyn and carry her things up to her room. She lets her smile at her and give her directions to the diner and linger too long when she says goodbye. And once she's gone, Lena feels like her throat burns, like she's swallowed coals, like the last four hours of her life was a blazing scorch-mark of confusion.

She's stuck in this small town with a girl that's too pretty to be anything but trouble, and a brain that's too messy to do anything but latch on to her, and she hates it. She hates that she's already set on throwing herself at Kara if it means launching away from her problems. She hates that she's already made up her mind to drag her feet on seeing this house.

She hates that she came out here in the first place, hates that she didn't ignore the letters and let the house get condemned, but. It seemed to be the only thing calling her in instead of pushing her away, and she hates more than anything that she showed up with that sort of chest-tightening vulnerability in the first place. 

So she takes a shower and pretends the drizzles are the rain washing her away into nothingness; and she tries not to think about Kara's blue eyes shining in the sunlight after she's had a goodnight of sleep and a change into dry clothes.

It takes her sixty minutes of staring at the ceiling before she finally gets her brain to stop buzzing so she can fall asleep.

> _ **THE NEW REPUBLIC** _
> 
> _October 15, 2019_
> 
> _Lena Luthor: On Losing it all._
> 
> _The 25-year-old former head of a billion dollar tech department is wearing a frumpy green sweater and chatting with a table next to us about the perfume she's wearing. "I suppose it's strong isn't it?" she asks, laughing along before she explains it's lavender and sandalwood, maybe a bit of cedar. She explains how she doused it on this morning more heavy-handed than usual._
> 
> _It seems like she doesn't miss a beat--she laughs and smiles and offers to pay the bill--happy and friendly despite her life falling apart in the public eye. Still open, despite her every move being a media storm ever since she took the blame for bringing down the biggest CEO in the country, if not world--her very own brother._
> 
> _Lena Luthor has a sort of instant familiarity about her--the way she leans over her plate of eggs to nudge my wrist when she remembers a particular detail of a story, how she chats about shows she likes or eating too much Big Belly Burger or what her plans are for turning twenty-six in just a few days._
> 
> _She's not that old, I think, the more I talk with her. When I was 25 I wasn't even sure I wanted to be a journalist yet, and Lena... well it seems she's already lived an entire life and had to watch it fall apart right in front of her._

"Ground rules," Lena says, folding her arms before she even bothers sitting at the table across from Kara. "I think it'd be best if we set some, because I slept on it and decided your behavior is unacceptable."

Kara leans back in her seat, navy and red flannel unbuttoned over a white t-shirt as she chews her lip, and she could god-honest be a fucking _GQ_ photoshoot right now. The suns' hitting her in a way that would shut even Tyra Banks up about _catching the light_. She's all sorts of perfect without even _trying_ and -- yes, ground fucking rules. This is why they need them.

"What did you have in mind?" Kara asks, smirk in her voice and on her lips and in everything she's doing, arms draped lazily over the back of the chair so her chest's exposed.

She's so in her element, Lena wants to make it a _rule_ she can't sit like_ that. _

"No touching me," Lena says, tilting her chin up, trying not to let it show on her face that she thought the whole night about Kara's thumb grazing her cheek, even dreamt about it. "And no creating situations where we should touch."

"And?" Kara asks, lips shiny and moisturized and plump-perfect today. 

"That's all I had," Lena says, deflating, uncrossing her arms and finally taking her seat across from Kara. There are warm pancakes and syrup already in her spot, and even a platter of fruit and three sides of bacon. Kara looks like she's just sipping a coffee and eating a buttered toast. "You're very handsy, so thought I'd put it out there I'm not into being touched."

"Okay," Kara mouths, smiling even wider, then she leans forward on the table so Lena gets a clear, bright picture of her. "I'll follow your rules, _any _rules you decide to make. Scout's honor. Is it okay if I ask how you slept?"

"It's okay," Lena says, picking up the fork from the table and poking at one of the pancakes. It feels weird that all this food seems to be for her, but she's also starving. ''Wasn't good, wasn't bad. It was alright."

She shoves in a mouthful of pancake and chews on it slowly, watching Kara's fingers twitch like she wants to reach out. "Is that about normal for you?"

"I guess so," Lena shrugs, going for her second bite of the pancakes.

"Am I allowed to ask about it?"

Lena shakes her head. "No, that one's off limits."

"Am I allowed to talk about the house?" Kara asks, brows set in a firm line that tells Lena they both know the answer to that.

"Don't want to talk about that either," Lena says, finding this bite particularly hard to swallow.

"What _do _you want to talk about, then?" Kara asks, and Lena shrugs. She knows she's maybe being difficult, but she's really not sure what to say. So she stays quiet. Kara just stares at her a second, two seconds, three seconds, before she lifts up and pulls her elbows off the table, eyes piercing a hole right through Lena's chest. "Alrighty, then," she says slowly, quietly, and for some reason it makes Lena's heart sink. "Well, I have to go open up the store, but we can take a raincheck on that conversation, maybe? Pick it up again once you figure out what it is that _isn't_ off limits."

"You're leaving?" Lena asks, aiming for indifferent but falling very, _very _ short. 

"I am, but I have a lunch break?" Kara offers, and this weird feeling builds in Lena's throat, because she's not _begging for it_, and she wants to spit out something mean and unflattering and put Kara right back in her place for suggesting she is. But it's like Kara reads her mind, because she adds, "I can show you around town, help you get your footing so you're not stuck hanging out with me the whole time."

And Lena doesn't mind that, so she nods and says, "Sounds good," then she waits for the door to the diner to click closed behind Kara before she starts eating her food again. She hates the small piece of her screaming that she should have opened up.

She should have opened up, because it might have meant that Kara stayed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> special thanks to my beta, who has never caught a single one of my typos, but provides great moral support. <3

Lena takes her time eating, picking through her food until there's just half the stack of pancakes left and she can't take another bite. 

Then she spends some time pressing fork marks through the leftover syrup and just _thinking_ for a bit.

When she started driving in the Northeast corner of the United States, she didn't think she'd make it this far, didn't think she'd make it even thirty miles in that shit excuse of a car she had.

But she drove over forty-three hours with no real plan, with only the letters from the city burning a hole in her mind and everything else being shoved down into her pit of repressed sadness. It wasn't until the _storm_ that she actually had to snap out of her haze and pay attention.

And it wasn't until _Kara_ that she actually had to _think_ about _the house_, that she actually had to think about the fact that it's collapsing walls, this town, and her mother are all connected.

She hadn't considered, beforehand, that _this is where her mother grew up_. That Lionel didn't just get her a house in the middle of nowhere because he thought it'd be a _neat_ thing to do. It was probably because it was supposed to mean something.

The fact it's way-out on the outskirts of town probably means something, too, but Lena doesn't think about that.

She doesn't want to think about any of this, not really, so she blinks her eyes until she feels she's fluttered the thoughts away, takes a too big sip of her lukewarm coffee, and focuses her mind on thinking about Kara instead.

She _likes_ thinking about Kara, for some reason, likes the way Kara makes her feel important, _chased_. She likes cataloging all the ways she's _too_ pretty in her head like she's counting sheep at bedtime. She likes thinking about how she's nice, but not _too_ nice that it's weird or threatening. 

Right now Kara's the perfect balance of unknown and familiar, not _so_ out of the ordinary Lena wants to turn away, but still unfamiliar enough that Lena wants to know more. It's just, every time she opens her mouth, it's like she gets stuck.

And every time her chest says she should talk to Kara, her brain says _no_.

So she's in a weird loop of being intrigued enough to meet her at a diner, but closed off enough to not bother talking to her, and this is weird. This is _weird_weird even for her standards.

"Mind if I sit?" someone asks, and Lena's half-tempted to say _actually i do_, since it's a guy's voice and she doesn't know any _guys_ here, but when she glances over her shoulder it's just the guy that greeted her when she walked in, the one that owns the place, she assumes. _Hank_. 

"Sure," she says, clearing her throat since it comes out dry and she doesn't want to be _rude_ if this is her only quality food source. She nods her head for him to sit, then waits as he takes the spot Kara had earlier and tries not to scratch a hole in her pants under the table.

"You look just like her," he starts with, smiling as he swipes crumbs off the table into his hand and folds them into a napkin. He doesn't even open with _hi _ or _hello_, just takes a jab. "It's like my mind skipped back thirty years when you walked in."

Lena feels her stomach twist, because she knows this is about her mother, and this wasn't a conversation she expected or even _wanted_ to have. It never crossed her mind she could be spotted a mile away coming here, and it terrifies her.

It scares her that her curiosity is just as strong as her _not wanting to know_. Because Lionel never talked about her mother, and Lillian pretended she didn't exist, and now it seems _everyone _has a story about her.

So Lena's stuck, trapped, wanting to run away but knowing this is the only place she'll ever get answers. "You knew my mother?"

"It's hard not to know someone when the only place in town to eat out is the family business," he laughs, leaning back in his chair. "I get all the family dinners and first dates and kids planning their futures out of here over milkshakes and fries."

"I'm guessing my mom fell in that last category?"

"Not always," he says, and Lena wishes she hadn't asked that question, because there's an alternate world now, where her mother didn't hang up her life to travel with a married man.

She chews her lip a second, then asks, "So you just knew me, who I was? Right from the second you saw me?"

"Well, I guess it helped a lot that Kara gave me the heads-up you might be coming in this morning."

"Oh," Lena says immediately, then pinches herself on the thigh under the table, so she doesn't say something snappy. "I guess word travels fast here."

"No, Kara's not like that," Hank says, and his smile fades a little, serious all of sudden like they can't insult the literal golden child. "The Danvers girls spent a lot of time here after their dad died, so I did a lot of watching out for them. She tells me most things when she's upset. And she seemed a little torn-up over saying something about your house."

Right, that.

The shit Lena wants to forget the most, wants to push down and shake away and never think about again. The thing that makes Lena almost _not_ want to see the house, not go inside it or - or _touch_ it or be anywhere near those fucked up memories. It _almost_ makes her want to show up at the city office and say _what do i need to sign_ then haul ass out of this town into the great unknown like none of this ever existed.

She hated every second of hearing _that_ story from Kara, but--

But while they're here, she might as well be mad about it. "That it was vandalized? That children used my mother's death to fuel their ghost stories and slept there because it was a fun thing to do? That they used maybe the worst moment of my life as entertainment," she asks, very acutely upset now, feels like her cheeks are on fire. "Yeah, she might have mentioned that."

Hank leans forward and his smile's completely gone, something heavier settling in his eyes. "You have to understand that your mother, well--" He sighs strained and deep, then blinks his eyes closed for a long second as he shakes his head, before he opens them again, and says, "You know, when she was younger she was so vibrant, had a beautiful singing voice, always talked to anyone that would listen, always taking care of everyone and everything, but--she left, she left for _years_ after she met--"

He cuts off and Lena whispers, "My father?" so ashamed she wishes she could melt, just evaporate out of existence.

"Yeah," he says, voice dropping to match Lena's. "By the time she came back, the kids didn't really know her. And she was only around town to pick up food or groceries, or visit the library, maybe a doctor's visit or two for _you_. They just didn't see her enough to... they just didn't _know_ her. So when _it_ happened, I think it was hard to process exactly how to feel about it, what to do with that information."

_She was a ghost even before she died_, Lena thinks, and something about that makes her breakfast flip-flop in her belly, makes her wish she hadn't eaten so much. "I get it. Kids are kids. They have imaginations."

"I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's alright," Lena says, pushing her plate away from her on the table. "I mean it makes sense, when you say it that way."

"If it helps," he offers, reaching forward and toying with edge of one of the fruit platters. "She really loved to travel. She visited two or three times after she left, came back between trips, and her eyes lit up whenever she told stories about the places she'd seen, little villages on country sides and skyscrapers and full-course meals on private jets. She'd been dreaming of leaving for a while, ever since your grandmother passed away. So it's nice she got that chance. Not many people do around here."

_No_, Lena thinks, _that doesn't help_. It doesn't help knowing her mother had dreams of leaving, and then she got shoved _back_ right when she'd made it out. By Lillian, probably. By Lionel, mostly. By getting herself wrapped up in this fucked up family, just because it was her only way out of a place too small to hold her any longer. It doesn't help knowing about her mother being happy and then being... a fucking ghost? Fuck.

She presses her eyes closed and tries to shut it off, tries to stop the wave from crashing against her forehead, thick and explosive just like it felt when Kara said all that _shit_ in the car.

Jesus Christ, she just wanted--she doesn't _know _what she wanted coming here, okay, but it wasn't _this._

"I think, um," she starts, finally opening her eyes again after forever of just _sitting_ there, trying and trying and trying to make it go away. "I think I'm having a long morning. Had a rough night from the storm, you know? So--"

"I'll get you a to-go box for these pancakes," Hank says, tapping his fingers against the table before he stands up. "Sorry if I overstepped, I - I'm just sorry. If you ever want to talk, though, I'm here. Whenever you need me."

She finds a nice bench in the park across the street after she leaves. Busies herself throwing pancake scraps at the birds and trying to imagine what she'd be like if she grew up in a town this small with dreams _so_ big.

In her mind, she'd be like Kara—solid and slow-paced, bright smile and a steady job. Happy with the _one_ diner in town, nice to strangers, good with her hands, curious and tan and smart enough to know what she doesn't know.

She'd be content with her two dogs and a garden full of roses and hydrangeas, and she'd never think about the smell of a busy city street or the sound of honking horns on her way to work.

_No_, those sorts of things would never cross her mind, because she'd have a different chaotic symphony to love--one of thunderstorms and hail showers, and screaming kids, too, once the time was right.

_In her mind_ she'd make the most of it, make the _best_ of it, and live happily ever after.

But,_ in reality_ \- in reality she'd be different than the rest, never sitting still, _craving_, always wanting more.

She'd latch on to the first hot-shot that said he loved her and offered her free plane rides and big cities. She'd let him leech off the hope from her small-town big dreams, let him suck her sunlight dry until she was a shell with a crooked smile and he was three steps out the door towards his family again.

She'd let him tell her pretty things, sing his son pretty songs. Let him knock her up, throw her away, buy her a house on the edge of a place she used to call home as a peace offering that never brings her any peace.

Then she'd _let _him leave her for good, for his _own _good, and promise to never speak his name again. Still smiling as he walks away, hand heavy on her overgrown belly, like the thought of never seeing him again doesn't burn like hot nails scratching lines into her skin.

Lena's like her mother, in the worst ways, and that's what scares her about herself.

She's too trusting, too friendly, too kind. Spends her money opening new wings in children's hospitals instead of investing it in personal gain. She would rather save the world than take it over, save a woman than save herself. Because she doesn't have the grit, the guts, the _whatever it is_ that allows a Luthor to not care. The stuffs that melts a conscience and allows a person to start an affair, a_ family_, across the country with a girl that's maybe too big for her small town—and then rock her world enough she doesn't want to be in it anymore.

No, she doesn't have _that_ Luthor gene. Instead, she's always lost, always searching, always needing validation.

She's always reaching out with no real direction, stretching her limbs until she knocks into something she _thinks_ might not hurt her.

Lena Luthor is a '_dark hole of mystery and secrets_' according to the media, but in reality she's just a lost little girl with no sense of direction. Always searching for comfort in every nice face, every soft smile, every compliment. Every _woman_ over the age of fifty that tells her _good job_ and _great work _and tilts her chin up when they look at her so they know she's getting the full effect. The ones that touch her skin like it's too soft to be bruised, trail her lips like they're the last ones they'll ever kiss again, whisper things in her ear that make her think she's found her place in _their_ arms. The same ones that leave her burned and broken and crying in the middle of the night with no one to turn to, the ones that feed her lies and steal her work and teach her she's only as smart as her broken heart will allow her to be. Which is not _very smart_ at all.

She's a perfect mix of alcoholic bitterness from her father, and blind, self-destructive naivete from her mother.

And she wishes she could, _fuck_, she wishes she could maybe just be like _Kara_. She'd _love_ to be too confident to care, with dreams _just_ large enough for the space she's in. She'd love to drive a jeep and wear open flannels and soak up sunlight like the sun itself rises to glow her skin. 

She'd love to just, to _know--_to know for even a second, to be confident for even a moment--that she _is_ where she belongs.

She can't sit still anymore, suddenly too fucked up to be in one spot, so she walks up the main street, palms twitching at her sides like there's _too much _ on her mind she doesn't know what to do with. She came here for a lot of reasons, maybe, but _answers_ wasn't one of them.

She didn't come here to think about what her mother used like, where she'd drink or eat or hang out or shoot the shit with her friends. She didn't come here to figure out _when _or how her mother's heart got too big to beat inside this little flurry of a town, why she decided to risk it all for a man she couldn't have, how she could light up the heart of even _Lex fucking Luthor _but still fall so fucking far from grace that she'd let herself be used as a business trip toy.

Lena did _not _come here to figure out how her mother, a woman that loved the water, loved the ocean, sang about seas and swam like a fish, could drown in a lake she'd been in a thousand times before while her fucking daughter watched from the trees in the woods.

She came here to _runrunrun_, blow free like a strong wind. She came here to get away from everything she's ever known, be in a world that doesn't care she exists as a_ Luthor_, a world that doesn't care that she sometimes makes the front page of shitty-to-relatively large online news sources and can't get a job fixing cracks in port-a-potty toilets even if she wanted to.

She doesn't _want_ to know why she had to watch her mother die. She doesn't want to go to the house, to see it, to have it fixed, to put the pieces back together of who her mother was so she can find out who she _can_ be.

And she hates she let herself slip, let herself ask, let herself _think_ for just a second too long about this town and how its history is all intertwined with her and her mother and her grandmother apparently. She hates she can't stop thinking _now_ about all the ways Midvale can ruin her, the ways it can destroy her.

Because this town _can_ destroy her, and it can do it in a way that hurts a lot more than anything Lillian or Lex can ever toss in her direction.

So she walks until she feels the need to _run_, and then she runs until she can't anymore--back down the street, through the park again, back across the other side of town until she's rounding on the bed and breakfast with flushed cheeks and no breath, heart pounding so fast it's like it's expanding her chest wall with each thrust.

She needs to talk, needs to scream, needs to do _something_ that doesn't make her think about her mother anymore, or the house or the town or her past or Lillian or Lex or _anything_. She wants to turn off, to shed her skin and her memories and her brain, if she could, and never have to think about all the ways things and people and _places_ can hurt her.

And the only thing she can think of that can _help _right this second is Kara.

The only light in the darkness of her ever-whirling mind is the sound of Kara's voice and the way she looked at Lena in the car like she could actually _see_ her.

The way she'd crane her neck and tilt her head and nod nod nod like when Lena spoke she was _listening_ to her, and not just the words she was saying, but every breath she took and _how_ she was saying them. It reminds her of _Sam_, how she felt with her, how she knew for a while she had a _real_ friend, someone she could call a sister even, and _god _she doesn't know how she fucked that up so royally, but she'd give everything she has just to have it back.

But that's what she always does with good things in her life, always finds a way to make it bad, to make it hurt, to make it _scar_.

Which is probably why she's _here_ now, probably why she's like this in the first place.

> _ **People Magazine** _
> 
> _April 15, 2017_
> 
> _After a whirlwind trip to Tokyo and a broken off engagement, it looks like Lena Luthor still isn't slowing down. She was spotted today at the Cavaliers game alongside long-time friend and business partner, Samantha Arias. _

She's not sure how long she sits on the stairs of the porch with her head tucked between her knees, but eventually the tight feeling in her chest fades, replaced with nothing but a _sad_ feeling, and it feels like she can move again.

So she does, she goes inside the B&B to the computer against the wall in the office area, the one Joslyn pointed at and said _it isn't much but it works if you need the internet_, and she starts drafting up an email with no sense of coherent direction. She just knows she needs to get this out, needs to say it, or else it'll eat at her like the rest of the shit floating through her head.

So she types out, _hi sam, i know it's been forever since we've talked, and you've probably seen all the shit about me in the news_, heart climbing higher and higher in her chest with each word, skin prickling against the underarms of her shirt with perspiration. _but i wanted you to know that i miss you and i need you and i'm ashamed it took me completely unraveling for me to see that and finally reach out again. _

_but, i want you to know that i'm sorry, truly sorry, and if you have it in you, i'd love to talk sometime._

_sincerely, lena_, she signs it, and then she presses send without thinking about it, before she signs out of her email and turns the computer off, heart sinking because _fuck_. She's not sure that'll make anything better.

She shows up in front of Danvers' Hardware twenty-five minutes later.

It's two hours earlier than anyone would rightfully take their lunch break, but her head's swimming and the only thing she _knows_ is that Kara started this with that stupid story she told in the car. When she talked to Hank and decided more people should _know_ who Lena is, as if that's what she wanted. When she made this trip something more than Lena signing off on papers, and made her think about her mother's ghost and her memories being trashed and kids making fun of her and _all_ the horrible shit she said.

God, she made this whole thing ten times worse and she's fucked Lena's mental state into an even shittier position than it was before. 

And Lena knows she didn't intend it, honestly, knows she was just trying to keep good company. But it's all Lena can think about now, like she's gone into a slump in the opposite direction of the slump she was in before, and she'd rather think about the old bad shit, than the _new_ bad shit_._

So she's here, at this store, staring at the red lettering of the painted-on _Danvers_ and trying to figure out why it feels like Kara can make it better, when she's the one that made it worse. Trying to figure out why she can't bring herself to even _open the door_.

She winces at her reflection in the clear glass of the storefront, the red under her eyes where her make-up used to be, the little patches where her hair isn't sitting right, the spots where her eyebrows are too clumped together.

And she wonders if Kara's actually _interested_ in her, or if she fixes her hair and holds her hands and asks her about her sleep because she genuinely _looks_ bad, because she looks like she could use a hot meal and a shower and maybe a little bit of pity-laced charity.

She wonders--

_dink dink dink_, she hears knock against the glass in front of her, and... oh.

Thankfully, Kara's the type to seek her out as soon as she notices her. Thankfully, she's proper cheerful and energetic and loves to invite herself to the side-show special of Lena Luthor's failing life, and Lena isn't left alone with her thoughts _too long_ for her to pull herself back.

"How's it going?" Kara asks, bell on the door dinging as she pokes her head through, smile bright and white as her curls topple over her tilted forehead. "You're a little early, but it's a slow day if you wanna come in."

"What's a fast day look like?" Lena asks, still too nervous to go in, digging the toe of her converse into the concrete and wishing she'd cleaned the mud off last night so she'd look even a little less disgusting. "Can't imagine you get too much surprise business around here."

"Sure I do," Kara shrugs, stepping outside and letting the door shut behind her. Her shoulders are too broad in her shirt, so the material is stretched too tight around them, and it makes Lena's mouth dry looking at it. "I take on a lot of projects myself, so there's always lots to do. I can even show you some things i've worked on when we're out today. So when you're finally in the mood to talk about it, you'd know I'm qualified to fix up your--"

"Forget I said anything," Lena says, stiff and unfriendly. If feels like everything is crumbling around her, like there's nowhere she can go today that doesn't begin and end with that fucking house. "You don't have to take me on a parade of your life's accomplishments, I'm good."

"Okay, then." Kara chews her lip a second, face hardset in something Lena can't read, then she bounces back all sharp blue eyes and too-pink lips, "I guess I'm just saying there's no town_ too small_ for a hardware store. Investing in tools is a smart move, it's good business."

"You know a lot about smart business, then?" Lena asks, ducking her head since she feels naked, feels exposed, feels ugly and vulnerable without her face made up. Especially in front of someone as effortlessly flawless as Kara. So she's lashing out again, feels herself doing it, for no real reason other than to make Kara feel smaller than her larger than life presence. A shit thing to do, she knows, but she can't fucking help it and it's chewing her up inside that she's _too raw_ to be a decent human being right now. "You pick that up in hardware school?"

"I went to National City University, actually," Kara says, folding her arms across her chest, eyes glinting like this is a fight she's _going _to win. And Lena feels her ears prick with heat knowing she's maybe fucked up again. 

"I know National City isn't as big as Metropolis," she goes on, "but it was still too big for _me_. I felt like I couldn't _think_, like life was always buzzing around me and I was just _too slow_ to keep up. But I thought I might go into marketing for a while, so I gave it an honest shot. Then I realized I'm happier just getting things done with my hands." She pauses and takes a second to tug at her bottom lip, eyes glimmering like a light-bulb's flickering on behind them. "I _do_ run a mean Christmas ad in the newspaper, though. So, I'm still putting my degree to good use, if you ask me. I think I could maybe make it in the city if I wanted it enough."

"I'm sorry," Lena admits, insides squeezing like someone's wrapped their hands around them, like they're trying their best to squeeze the water out of her. "I wasn't - I didn't mean to assume--"

"I'm uneducated? That I peaked as captain of the soccer team and my entire life is me riding in jeeps, building sheds, and trying my best to relive my high-school glory days? Drinking beers sitting in truck beds and whatnot?"

"You're trying to convince me you _don't _ drink beers sitting in truck beds?" Lena asks, breath hushed out and high-pitched, a shit attempt at bringing the conversation somewhere lighter, but it's painfully obvious that even her best attempt at a _good natured_ joke is still a full on attack.

"No, Lena Kieran," Kara says, Lena's name rolling slick off her lips, hot like fire to match the quirk in her eyebrow. "I prefer_ wine_, actually. The pink ones you can just twist the cap off and don't have to bother with the cork-screw nonsense." She takes a step forward, close enough that Lena can smell she uses a strong deodorant or maybe bodywash, definitely something that comes in a four-dollar black bottle and says _For Men _in large letters across the front. "But I accept your apology, if that's what that was. You should just - you should be careful how you say things to people around here. Some of us actually have feelings."

"Well, I _am_ sorry. Truly," Lena says, feeling her cheeks flush up, but it's like she cant look away, heart racing a mile a minute as she tries her best to keep her face straight. She takes a deep breath before she says, as friendly as she can, "As an apology, you should let me introduce you to some wines that'll change your mind about corkscrews."

"As an apology, you should say something that doesn't discount my preferences. I don't like things that leave a bitter taste in my mouth, but I guess that's another knock against me in your eyes."

The words are like a slap to Lena's face, a punch to everything she's ever known about herself. Kara's not a drill, she's _off limits_. She isn't here to burrow a hole in Lena's tough exterior, she's here to remind Lena of what she's not good enough to have. She's fire and black sand and mountain rock on the outside, pretty until you realize she burns you, she's formed from lava, you'll slip on her and she's unforgiving when you do it.

"I should just go," Lena starts, chest too tight to stop the tears threatening to topple at the back of her eyes. "I'm sorry, again. I'm--"

"No, I'm sorry," Kara says, reaching out her hand but stopping just short of Lena's arm, pulling it carefully back to her chest, and flattening her lips in a line like something other than _apologetic _ is settling over her. "It's not fun is it? It sucks when someone decides you're the bad guy and treats you that way when you've done nothing to deserve it. I'm just trying to be nice here, Lena, and you don't have to _trust_ me, because i know you don't _know_ me, but you don't have to be a jerk about it, either. If you want me to go away, just say it. But don't insult my intentions or my intelligence. We're both too old to play games like that."

"Right, I. I know, I just meant--" Lena stumbles out, biting her lip _hard_ after, because she's an idiot and she's in broad daylight and she's got red splotches under her eyes and no place to hide herself.

Kara's an _onion_ if she's ever seen one, and it feels like she let Lena in and then kicked her out a layer, and it _stings_. It stings and bites and burns in a weird, particular way she can't place her finger on, but, _god_.

Lena hasn't _wanted_ to impress anyone this much since she first met Lillian, and this is _not good_ for her. This has graduated from a car-wreck to a train-wreck, but in her mind she's all in. She's going to peel the layers of the Kara Danvers onion, even if it rips her apart to do so. Because she's only known her less than a day, but she's been slapped in the face enough times to know when someones _offering_ a hand, instead of raising one. And it doesn't take an engineer from MIT to figure out she's going to need a friendly face _soon _with the way she's spiraling down down down at light-speed.

So she'd kick herself for fucking this up, is what she's saying, especially when it's objectively the only thing she's got going for her right now.

"I'm sorry. That's it, no qualifiers," she says, folding her own arms and taking a step back, chewing the inside of her cheek until it tastes raw and metallic and the hurt from it is dissipating some of the _sting_ in her eyes threatening to let her tears fall. "My name_\--full_ name--is Lena Kieran Luthor, and I - I don't know. I guess if you want to know why I'm so like _this_, maybe you should Google it. It's a lot, so I get if you decide I'm trouble and don't want anything to do with me. But I'll be at the B&B later if you still think I'm worth taking the time to get to know."

"Lena, I don't--" Kara starts, but Lena turns around and decides she absolutely does _not_ want to let Kara's big, apologetic eyes make her cry, doesn't want them to make her stay and accidentally open up, doesn't want to let them _stop her_ from getting away.

Except apparently Kara doesn't know how to _quit_, because she grabs Lena's arm and _makes _her stay. Makes her turn back around and stare at that--_god_\--there's _that_ crinkle again that she gets between her eyebrows, and her eyes that are so fucking blue it makes Lena's throat burn.

"Business isn't great, actually," she says, low and quiet. "Everyone orders things online now, and it's like I can't compete, you know? Amazon is like six times cheaper on one-day shipping, so. I mean, I don't know. I don't have it all figured out, I guess. It's okay if you don't either."

She pauses for a long time after, and Lena - her heart just can't handle Kara or this conversation right now, so she feels the acid burning at the back of her lips a long few seconds before she finally opens them up and lets it spew out.

"What do you want me to say to that?" she asks, and Kara sighs, long and defeated, Lena's chances of ever impressing her marching straight for the trees. "Why do you even care? Why stop me? What do you want from me?"

"_Christ_, Lena, I'm sorry for bringing up your house. I don't doubt you're going through some stuff right now, but it's okay to--"

"Fuck, stop, just _stop_ bringing up the house," Lena yells, snatching her arm away, face hot and tense and tingly. "Just look me up if you want to know things about me so much. You'll get all the answers you need online, nothing about my life isn't documented."

She's not sure what looking anything up will do, but--_ugh_\--there's a dumb part of her hoping that Kara will _get_ it. That she'll get it and then she'll magically morph into the perfect person Lena needs without Lena ever having to open her mouth to talk about it. But all Kara wants to do is be difficult and make her _feel_ crappy about herself.

"I don't know what that means," Kara says.

But Lena's already moving fast in the other direction, already shutting her ears off and blanking out her brain so she can make it back to the bed and breakfast in more or less one piece. And this time, thankfully, Kara _doesn't_ make an effort to pull her back.

> _**CNN** _
> 
> _October 27, 2019_
> 
> _HEADLINE: Lex Luthor Still at Large_

There's a knock on her door just after 3 p.m., and she nearly doesn't answer it.

She's flicking through the headlines about her _losing it all_ or about her _rise and fall_ and even the ones from two years ago about her broken-off engagement, and she's afraid of what Kara's come up with. Afraid she's here to laugh or spit in Lena's face, or tell her she's just a broken up city girl with no business judging anything that can properly tie its shoes in the morning or make it out the house without having a gut-twisting cry first. She's afraid Kara's here to say the shit that Lena fundamentally _knows _is true, the shit that'll hurt even more coming from _Kara's_ mouth than anyone else's because Lena desperately wants her approval, and she would have _had _it if she didn't blow it.

She's afraid she's fucked up, and messed up, and caught the wrong kinds of feelings that'll _mess her_ up.

But the knock is firm and sure, three hits, syncopated, that keep echoing through Lena's head until too long of a time has passed and the knocks happen again. So Lena looks up and sighs, dragging her legs from under her so she can climb off the bed. She was expecting this all along, truthfully, knew Kara would come even if she ended up hating her. She even put on eyeliner and dark red lipstick and did something about the god-awful bags under her eyes. If she's going to be shit on, she's ready for it, and she'll look _good_ as Kara walks away from her once and forever.

Except it's not Kara when she opens the door.

It's a tall woman, brunette, eyes dark and intense and checking Lena over like black-ops on a scouting mission. If looks could kill, she'd be an anti-aircraft gun, so all Lena can do is stare and blink and hope she has the wrong room. "Can I help you?"

"You're Lena, right?" she asks, and her face softens into a smile warm enough to melt Lena's heart a bit. "I'm Alex Danvers, Kara's sister? She said you left your car parked somewhere south of here and asked if I'd offer to take you to get it."

"Oh," Lena says, trying her best to not let her mouth hang open, trying hard to not let the disappointment show that Kara didn't offer up _herself_ for a nearly two-hour drive. "You barely know me, and I'm not trying to put you out. I'm sure I could find a way to--"

"It's no problem," Alex says, holding up her keys like she's all ready to go. "Besides, Kara wouldn't shut up about you last night, least I could do is figure out if you're bad news for my sister."

"Right," Lena drags out, not sure if she should laugh or duck for cover. But as dumb and shameful and stupid as it is, her heart rate picks up thinking about Kara _talking_ about her, and suddenly she wants to know everything she's said, so she says, "I'll just grab my things."

Then she smashes her feet back into her converse, grabs her keys and wallet, and follows Alex out the door. 

It takes her twenty minutes of the car ride to figure if Kara grew up in a house with _Alex Danvers_, then she was never going to have a problem handling Lena Luthor. Alex is as tough as nails and at the same time soft as pillow stuffing. She likes old rock and new country and asks Lena questions like, "So, are you bringing trouble with you or just trying to escape it?"

"Huh?" Lena mumbles, ears adjusting from _sunshine of your love_ on the radio to Alex's question. "I'm not sure what you mean by that?"

"Those are the only two reasons new faces show up around Midvale, so which one is it?" she asks, black leather of her jacket shining in the sunlight as her hair whiffs in the wind of her rolled down window.

She's so _forward_, not lazy in her words, or laid back or _easy_, nothing telling Lena she'd back down from a good bark.

So all Lena has left is her real story and the _truth. _"Not sure if Kara told you, but I'm not exactly a _new_ face, I guess. I came back to see about my mother's old house. The victorian on the edge of town."

"I know, but why _now_?" Alex asks. "I'm pretty sure they've been trying to contact you for years and then you show up during a massive storm, and in less than twenty-four hours make Kara more upset than I've seen her in _years_."

"That wasn't on purpose," Lena says, hands gripping tense on her thighs. "Kara's just - she's just _so_\--"

"Familiar?" Alex finishes, and yeah, _that_. "She asks a lot of questions, right? Really friendly, likes to be close. She can jump into a conversation as smooth as anything. I always tell her in another life she's one hell of a reporter."

"Yeah, that's about right."

"She's harmless, though, okay? Sometimes her mind just catches an idea and she _has_ to say it out loud. She's a verbal person, it's how she processes, so. Give her a break. It doesn't look like you're trying to make friends, but she's a good one to have when you don't have anyone else."

Lena nods. "I think part of me, _most_ of me has figured that out."

Alex chews her lip a second, then let's it slide from beneath her teeth, eyes intense on the road like she's thinking hard about something. "Are you staying?"

"Here?" Lena asks, dumbly. "I - for a little bit, I think. Couple weeks at least. I don't have anywhere else to be."

"Where are you headed after, then?" she asks.

And.

Lena just shrugs her shoulders, because she actually doesn't know.

It turns out Alex isn't big on conversation, just lets the radio play and the wind blow for majority of the drive, so Lena finally has a second in the cool air to force her brain to shut off again. Her therapist used to say _it's okay to take a mental break. if you really can't escape the bad shit, then it's okay if you say it doesn't matter for an hour each day. you can create your own escape, and go back to it when you've recovered enough._

So, Lena tried it out, let herself stop worrying for an hour each day, and then it became two, and then it slid into an unhealthy coping mechanism where she started dissociating twenty-four seven and she feels like that wasn't the point of the exercise.

She feels like she has half the information she needs to know, and not enough training in psychology to guess what the other part would be, so she's making it up as she goes along--and the amount she keeps failing makes it really obvious why she needs an actual professional or maybe a fucking _break_. But that'll have to wait she guesses, until she gets herself on her feet, until she gets far away enough from the Luthor family to get hired again, until she has enough disposable income she can focus her mental health needs.

And god knows how long it'll be before she's in that place again, so. 

So she pushes that thought down, too, and fills her head with the words of each song on the radio, one by one like she's replacing her thoughts with the heartbreak from old rock songs instead of her own, and it works. Or it does for now, at least.

It feels like no time at all before Alex is dropping her at her dented _'03 Camry_, frowning as the engine sputters when Lena tries to turn it on, shoving her hands in her leather pockets as she inspects the car.

It takes a few attempts of them both trying, popping the hood, touching things, trying again, and finally putting in more gas--because Alex had enough forethought to bring _gas--_but she _does_ finally gets it running.

And then it's just her, alone, on the ride back. So she keeps all the windows down and the radio blasting to make sure her thoughts don't try anything funny.

Kara’s outside her door when she finally makes it back to the B&B.

She's sitting on the floor with her back leaned against the wall and her knees pulled to her chest. Her steel-toe doc martens work boots scuffed up with the heels digging in the carpet beneath them. Most importantly, though, her arms are resting over her knees, and her _hands—_they're holding a folded piece of white paper.

She didn’t just look Lena up and come over to subsequently laugh in her face, she actually went and printed out the fucking evidence.

Something cold washes over Lena, a sort of numbness. Ice water chills through her veins and her heart slows down, like time stops it's ever-steady tick-tock-tick-tock, everything arrested and frozen, all chunked down to this single moment: Kara staring up at her with her cold blue eyes and a frown setting in on the corner of her mouth, something Lena hasn't seen on her face yet and definitely doesn't like. So, she stands there, holding her keys in her hand, hallway air suddenly cold and biting into her skin.

"Hey," she says after a moment, deciding it's best to just get shit out into the open instead of letting it fester, grow a mind of its own that she can't predict. "You came?"

Something about her voice must be off, because Kara's expression falters for a moment, like she's unsure of herself, but then it's like she steels it again. "Yeah, you got your car, right? Well, I know you got it, actually, Alex texted me. Um. I – I wanted to show you something. Something I found when I was looking you up. Like you told me."

"Okay, what is it?" Lena asks, bracing herself even though she's not quite sure what to expect. She feels this could go one of two ways: Kara thinks she's just a stupid rich girl with a _boo-hoo_ story, _or_ she's pissed about something Lena did that maybe tangentially fucked something in this small town and Lena's going to get an earful about it.

It's probably going to _hurt_, whatever she says, but hurt is palatable because it's the only fucking thing Lena knows at this point, all she can stomach for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She can't swallow anything else, so she welcomes it.

"Could you sit down? Next to me?" Kara asks, voice quiet and more serious than Lena likes to hear it.

And she doesn't want to fight about _this_, really doesn't, so she _does _it. She does it right away, plops down next to Kara and pulls her knees to her chest, lets her keys drop between her legs and takes a deep breath. And then she waits, stomach dropping in anticipation as Kara fiddles with the folded paper in her hands and nibbles her lip.

"I looked you up," she starts with. "I – and you don't owe me anything, swear it. You don't even know me, right? But there's one thing I wanna ask you about and I'm wondering if that's okay before I even start?"

"Yeah, shoot," Lena says, scratching the kneecaps of her old jeans and wishing she were anywhere but _here_.

"Alrighty," Kara says, clearing her throat in a way that makes Lena's shoulders tense. "Like I was saying, I looked you up. Just like you said to do. I typed Lena Luthor in the search, just like you said it, and then I clicked the images and I scrolled and scrolled and, gosh, Lena's there quite a lot of images of you. But I found _this_ one," she finishes.

And then she unfolds the paper and flashes it in Lena's direction, and—

"Kara, that's just me eating a fucking hotdog."

"Yeah, okay, but if you look closer," she says, shifting so she's facing Lena, eyes big and dumb and dumb and dumb. She came all this way with a fucking hotdog picture. "There's mustard on that hotdog, and _who _in their right mind puts mustard on a hotdog, Lena? I need answers."

"Oh my god," Lena groans, running her hands over her face, heart rushing a thousand yards a minute in the back of her throat. "Did you even read any of the articles?"

"No, because unless it comes from your mouth, I don't care about it. If there's something you want me to know, you'll tell me. And until then, I can wait for it."

"I could be a murderer," Lena frowns.

"We could all be, under the right circumstances," Kara counters.

Lena groans, long and loud and exasperated. "Kara."

"Lena."

"_Kara_."

”_Lena_. Invite me into your room. I've been sitting on this floor forever and my butt's hurting. C'mon, I wanna sit on your bed now."

"You're so dumb," Lena mumbles, but she's already pulling her cramped legs off the floor, standing and twisting the doorknob to let Kara in. It's not even a proper hotel, just an old house, so Kara could have entered the room if she wanted, but.

Well, she _didn't_. So, Lena guesses that's another reason to keep her around.

"I talked to Hank," Kara says, shoving her boots off her feet once she's in the room, like she's making herself comfortable, or maybe just being polite. Lena wants to press her shoes off too, but it occurs to her she didn't put on any socks, and she doubts her still-slightly-damp converse are doing her feet any justice. "He um, he said he may have overstepped when he was talking to you, so I get - I _understand_\--"

"Why I was a bitch?"

"I wouldn't have phrased it that way, but more or less I get why you were upset when you saw me," Kara finishes, flexing her toes in her light blue socks, butterflies scattered across the material. "I'd offer a hug with my apology, but you said we're on no-touching terms."

Lena looks at her with her soft socks and big hands and the way she feels like home with her pinked-up cheeks and lopsided smile and thinks getting a hug from her is probably what heaven would feel like.

So that makes it dangerous. "It's okay, an apology is enough. More than enough, actually. I should be the one that's sorry."

"We'll get stuck in a loop if we keep it up, so we're both sorry," Kara smiles, folding her hands against her chest, now that Lena's stuck her foot in her mouth and fucked up a good hug. "And I do - I _do_ care, as much as I can at this point, okay? I want to get to know you, like--have you ever just looked at someone you've barely met and..." she trails off and Lena's mind decides to try on it's inner Rupi Kaur and finishes _in your heart they feel like home_, and it's so sharp a thought, a _feeling_, that she buries it the second it creeps up. "I don't know I can't describe it."

"I get what you're saying," Lena mumbles, turning her head towards the bed in case Kara can read her mind through her eyes.

"Yeah, so," Kara says, dropping her arms and clapping her hands together. "I think that's why you should -- no, you are _definitely_ going with us tomorrow to the town over to celebrate autumn and _Halloween_, no ifs ands or buts."

"Okay," Lena says, looking back over, because that's the first comforting thing she's heard all day. Something fun that doesn't involve her last name or her house or her _mother_. "Will there be drinks?"

"Of course, there'll be plenty of beers and truck beds for you," Kara smiles, cheeks breaking into a giggle. "There's the world's best cider and maple donuts and pumpkin picking and _bars_. They have those in Metropolis, don't they? It's a fun time, I swear it."

"That sounds amazing," Lena says, smiling herself, _geuninely_, for the first time in a long fucking while. "I'm in."

"Awesome, I'll tell Alex," Kara chirps, face lighting up like it's the world's best news. "But first we should like, maybe sit next to each other and see if we can go ten minutes without our heads exploding. I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. And we've both had a long day, and we're _both _tired," she explains inching towards the bed, until she's flopping back on it, t-shirt riding up so her creamy skin is showing through it. "So we should both just lie down for a little bit."

"Okay," Lena says. "Um, I'm taking my shoes off, but I haven't been wearing socks for the past few hours, so--"

"Stinky feet," Kara giggles, slow and dragged out like lying down for ten seconds already has her on the verge of passing out. "It's alright, I've probably smelled worse, trust me."

Lena wants to be embarrassed or ashamed, but, in the grand scheme of things, this is - this is just an excuse for her to _laugh_, so she does, giggles right alongside Kara. Then she shoves her shoes off and climbs on the bed next to her, pressing her shoulder into the sheets and watching her profile.

"They _do_ smell, oh my god," Kara whispers, and just when Lena thinks maybe she _should_ be ashamed, Kara flips over and grabs Lena's feet between hers, pulling them in as she lets her cheek sink into the mattress. "Gotta keep them covered so they don't murder us, contaminate our lungs."

"You're literally the most annoying," Lena whispers, flexing her ankle against Kara's and inhaling too sharply at the touch, the pressure of being _held_. Thankfully, Kara doesn't notice, thankfully she's blinking like each closing might be the time her eyes just don't open again.

"I know," she says. "You'll get used to it, though. It took Alex a while to like me, but we're pretty much best friends now."

"Your point of reference is your sister?" Lena asks, teasing, but Kara just takes a deep breath and hums _mmm_.

And, _fuck_, Lena wants her. It's all she can think, all she can focus on as they lie silently and blink at each other. She wants her for reasons she can't describe, in ways she's never felt before.

And she doesn't know what to chalk it up to, but she's in such a fucked up place that - that her feelings _can't_ be trusted.

But, _god_, she wants Kara.

She wants Kara to hug her, to hold her hand, to tell her everything's okay. She wants Kara to press her hip into the mattress and kiss up her sternum. Wants her to tell her she's _perfect _ and _pretty _ as she shoves her leg between Lena's and kisses her neck and jaw and ear, their bodies getting so tangled that Lena loses herself in Kara and maybe stays there forever.

She wants her so much, she's pretty sure she stops breathing.

And then, weirdly, Kara stops breathing too.

"Why are we holding our breath?" Kara asks, and Lena blinks and finally catches hers.

"I don't know," she lies. "Trying not to smell my feet, maybe."

"They're not so bad," Kara smiles, slow and lazy and Lena just wants to lick the glisten right off of her bottom lip. "m'used to them now. Should've smelt Alex's feet after cross country. She'd sit cross-legged, barefoot on the living room floor doing her homework right after training. Swear we'd have to fumigate the whole living room each time she did it."

"Never tell her you told me that," Lena laughs, ears on fire because it feels like vines are wrapping around her lungs and rib cage and snaking their way through her chest up to her aorta, suffocating the breath out of her.

She wants Kara so much she can't stand it. And it's dumb, so dumb, because she's had a dozen pretty girls in her bed before--from supermodels to the girls that carry trays at high-end parties. Had them wrapped around her fingers and her thighs, had them open and waiting and _wanting_. But there's something so wholly untouchable and irresistible about Kara, that she's sure she'd die if she had to ask for it.

And she's definitely going to _die_ waiting for it, and _ugh_. "Pretty sure she'd actually assassinate me."

"I'm pretty sure she would, too," Kara says, blinking heavy, nuzzling deeper and deeper into the bedspread... and then she falls asleep. She falls asleep right there on Lena's mattress.

Lena wants to wake her, wants to poke her or press her or hit her shoulder, but Kara smells _good_, like something Lena wouldn't mind calling home, and she's tired herself, wrung out from the early morning emotional turmoil and the running through the town and being cramped in a car for nearly four hours.

So, it's easy to forget she's not supposed to let Kara be this close, to forget they don't know each other and that she should probably put her out. It's easy to nod off next to her, cheek pressed against the mattress, toes finding their place snug against Kara's socks, and.

It's just easy, she keeps thinking. Everything feels so _easy_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thanks everyone for reading, hope you enjoy x

"Do you want me to go?" Kara asks, and Lena snuggles further into the sheets to pretend she's still sleeping.

They haven't been asleep that long, and she's making the executive decision that she doesn't have the energy to filter dumb questions without at least six hours of rest.

She can tell from Kara's giggling, though, that it's probably not working, so she finally hums, "_Hmm_?" as if she's only just barely heard it.

"It's like ten?" Kara explains, and Lena inches a bleary eye open to look at Kara's frumpy bangs clinging to her forehead. "We've been asleep for a few hours. Was wondering if you wanted me to leave?"

She doesn't, not really, but she's not sure how to say that just yet without seeming clingy, so instead she blinks her eyes closed again and rubs her feet together, sad Kara's not cuddling them anymore. "My feet are cold," she says, instead of answering. "My toes feel like they're freezing off."

"Okay," Kara says slowly, and, like a reward, she moves her feet back to cover Lena's again. "You want to put on some socks?"

"I didn't pack any socks," Lena mumbles, snuggling back in, just glad she got her warmth back.

"Are your hands cold as well?" She feels Kara's fingers wrap around her wrist, firm and warm, and she flexes into that, too. "Do you want my socks?"

"That's gross," Lena says automatically, letting Kara cup her fingers, letting Kara pull her hand towards her mouth and blow on it. Her stomach feels like it's twisting together, too much heat building in it, and _god_. She hates they're on good terms now, that she can't think of a good enough excuse to snatch her hands away that doesn't involve calling Kara weird or creepy. So now she's stuck actually _ enjoying_ being touched. "No sane person would ever offer that, just confirms my initial impression of you."

"Was just a joke, I'm sorry," Kara says. "And you never answered my question."

"Mmm," Lena hums, finally opening her eyes, watching Kara watch her, and she - _god_ she hates Kara and wants her to stay and be dumb and interested in her and do that thing that she does with her entire existence that makes Lena feel important, so. "I want them," she says.

"Excuse me?"

"I want your socks," she clarifies. "I'm used to sleeping with socks on, so. I want them, since you offered."

Kara laughs a second, and then she relaxes, shoulder sinking further into the bed, hair pooling on her cheek, and Lena relaxes too, because it's obvious Kara finally gets it. "Okay. You sure, though?

"Yeah," Lena nods, flexing her toes against Kara's socks for emphasis. "I'd actually really like that."

The sixty seconds it takes Kara to pull off her socks and put them on Lena's feet is probably the weirdest sixty seconds she's ever had to live through. But she ignores it, opting for pretending to fall asleep again, instead, letting one eye open just a little when Kara settles next to her again.

The socks are thick, warm and soft and _jesus_ Lena missed this. She feels like she can exhale, like she can have a good sleep maybe if she keeps the lights on and the socks on and the Kara in her bed.

"It's okay if I lie here with you still, right?"

"Yeah," Lena hums.

"Just sit here in silence, then? Or do you want to talk? I'm fine with either, just wanna know the game plan."

"I want to talk, it was the whole point of inviting you over," Lena says, before she thinks herself out of it. "Actually, I _wanted_ you to read, and then--"

"Judge you without knowing you?" Kara finishes. "Where's the fun in that?"

Lena frowns. There's no fun in having to verbally express how shitty her life is, but--she hasn't had a chance to talk about it to anyone, not really, how she's really feeling. And if she doesn't think about it too hard, it's easy to convince herself that saying it out loud right now is okay. She's alone in a hotel with a girl that doesn't care about the media. Her spilling her heart is like a tree falling in the forest and no one hearing it.

"I used to be a billionaire, you know?" she starts. "An actual billionaire. I used to run companies and go to Knicks games for fun and own a yacht and vacation in Italy, and now I have sixty-eight dollars to my name and zero job prospects."

Kara grabs her hand again, smoothing her own hands over it, and shrugs. "Sounds like a good story, at least."

"My mother doesn't love me, my brother wants to kill me, my best friend hates me for letting her down. _God_, I'm even opening up to a stranger in the middle of nowhere, wearing the socks she's had on all day. It's a shit story, objectively."

"Maybe," Kara says, like the proper dummy she is. "But, for the record, I showered before I came here. Those are fresh socks. And it's the most interesting story I've heard all - well, today at least."

"You're still an asshole," Lena says, breaking into a grin when Kara starts giggling. She knows she's just being a dork to keep Lena calm, knows she's trying not to pry, but there's still a part of Lena that's catastrophizing that Kara just doesn't care, so she asks, "Are you at least curious?"

"Very. But curiosity always kills this cat when it comes to you, so I'll wait for when you're ready."

"Thank you," Lena says, and she means it. It's so easy to talk to Kara, even when she's lashing out at her, even if they don't know each other that well, even if she's aware that she has a history of being a shitty judge with people. Kara just blasts through all of that, and Lena just wants to - _fuck_, she wants to be open. It's going to kill her, she knows it, but, again, she's just a tree in the forest that may or may not have fallen. "I don't have anything," she says out loud, directly, for maybe the first time. "If it weren't for you I'd be sleeping on a park bench, probably couldn't even afford this."

"This sounds like we're complimenting me," Kara comments. "You're saying I did good? I helped?"

"Your head's already big, don't let it get to it," Lena says, then she swallows and braces herself before she admits, voice entirely too low, "I couldn't even afford you to fix up my house."

And this time Kara finally gets serious herself. "Don't worry about that, okay?"

"I'm not going to let you do it for free, not with Amazon shitting on you."

"Fine, you drive a hard bargain. I'll do it for ten dollars, but I'm willing to go lower if I have to," Kara smiles, and it sounds like a joke, but Lena knows she means every word of it. Something about that--she's not ready to process it.

"Can we not talk about that, not yet? Sorry I brought it up."

"Of course, change the subject as much as you'd like. I'm along for the ride."

"I think that's as much as I want to talk tonight," Lena decides, and since she's sticking with tree in a forest, she figures it can't hurt to ask, "Can you stay with me tonight? It's been a hard few weeks, and I'd like to not be alone for a bit."

"Do you want me to hold you or just lie next to you?" Kara asks, without hesitation, and it's so sincere, Lena's first instinct isn't even to fight it. Even if it's, objectively, a very dangerous question.

"Just lying here is good," she says.

"Alrighty," Kara mouths, eyes softening on Lena like she has any reason to be fond of her. "I'll also text Alex to bring you some clothes tomorrow and some of my shoes. Looks like our feet are about the same size, and no offense but I'm gonna put your converse in the hallway or maybe like, a fire pit."

"Full offense taken," Lena fake frowns.

Kara snorts. "Good because that smell is fully offensive."

"Whatever," Lena says. "And thank you for, I guess, everything."

"I told you I'm not a barbarian," Kara tells her, like that even makes any sense. "This is the full Kara Danvers the not-barbarian experience. It's gonna blow your mind, I swear."

"You're still dumb, though," Lena says.

She sleeps like a blink, one second her eyes are lidded and heavy, Kara smoothing her hair behind her ear, then the next second she's waking up. Her eyes spring in a panic, thinking maybe she missed Kara leaving or will have to sit through being alone again after a long night of feeling herself for once. But Kara's still there, chewing her lip in the chair in the corner, a new pair of socks on and some glasses, reading the newspaper with her legs crossed.

There's a tray of food on the dresser and coffee and fresh folded clothes, and it's all so domestic, it nearly makes Lena nauseous.

"I'm up," she announces, to stop herself from pretending to sleep, sitting up and curling the blanket around her waist. She kicked her jeans off last night, and she doesn't know how much she wants Kara to see her in her underwear. It's one thing when they're both asleep, but in the bright morning light anyone's eyes are likely to wander. "You stuck around?"

"Did you not want me to?" Kara asks, looking up. She's too pretty in the sunlight, too at home. Lena can handle her at night, maybe, but this is a whole new beast. "I could go?"

"No, it's fine," Lena decides. "I - I just, I don't know. I thought you might leave once I was asleep."

"I did," Kara says, gesturing at her clothes. "For a little bit. To grab clothes from Alex and bring you breakfast. But thought that was maybe okay, since you slept through the night pretty fine."

Oh. "Did you watch? Me?"

"A little? I can be a hard sleeper, didn't know if you wanted me around for bad dreams or something, so I stayed up until you looked pretty peaceful."

Oh. Again. "Yeah, guess I was vague, sorry."

"You're allowed to be."

It's too early for this, too early for Lena's heart to be fluttering--both time-wise in the morning, and relationship-wise. They barely even know each other. "You don't have to be so nice, you know?"

Kara shrugs. "Alex googled you last night, wouldn't let me off until she told me about you."

Lena definitely should have just stayed asleep. "Yeah? What'd she say?"

"That you did the right thing," Kara says, voice lilting like she's proud, like it's not a surprise, like she assumed Lena was good from the start and she's been right all along. She's so dumb.

"Maybe," Lena says.

Kara smiles, rays of light from the window glinting in her eyes. "I'll stop talking about it now."

"You're catching on quick," Lena smiles back. "I appreciate that."

"Of course," Kara chirps, folding her newspaper. "Day starts early, though, so. Shower, get dressed, eat something. You can switch the order on that if you want. And then we're heading out. Alex doesn't like when we keep her waiting."

"Yes, drill sergeant, Sir," Lena says, stiff.

Kara shakes her head, then says, "Oorah," winking like Lena won't just make it a rule she can't do that.

"You're a nerd, I hope you know that," she says instead.

"Um, maybe." Kara squints through her glasses. "But you started it."

"Whatever, just, _jesus_, stop staring at me, I'm not wearing pants," Lena says, then launches a pillow at Kara's head and sprints to the bathroom. She'll probably pay for it later.

"We're doing pumpkin carving," Kara explains, once they're at the festival, leading Lena through a field of people toward a tented area as Alex follows close by. Alex looks like she's sending a furious text and Lena's just glad she's not focused on _her_, for now at least. "Most of the daytime stuff is food and scenery and music, then there's bars at night. But we had breakfast, so we don't need to start with food."

"I've never carved a pumpkin before," Lena admits, fiddling with her sleeves. She's wearing Kara's_ everything_, just about, and it's driving her insane. She has on her flannel and one of her t-shirts and her jeans and her socks and her hiking boots, and she had to sit on the toilet this morning after she got dressed because she was so dizzy from just _smelling_ like _Kara_. "Is it messy, or like?"

"A little," Kara says, "But first place prize is a hundred dollars, so you could double your net worth if you play your cards right."

"Oh my god," Lena gasps, shoving Kara.

But Alex looks up from her phone and smiles, laughing out, "Oh, shit, nice one," as she claps Kara encouraging on the back, and Lena can already tell it's going to be a long day.

Pumpkin carving starts out fine--they listen to a little introduction, listen to some kids sing, and then a lady comes out and tells the the rules and time constraints. Once it's time to start, Kara helps her pick out a nice pumpkin, and then demonstrates how to cut the top off.

But things sort of go south from there. "This smells bad," Lena comments, twisting her nose up once she gets another whiff of her pumpkin's insides. It's like rotten eggs or stale water, moldy milk, jesus fuck. "I don't think this is right."

"Oh my god, it's just a pumpkin," Kara says through her smile, pumpkin intestines covering her fingers as she grabs them out like a caveman. "That's just how pumpkins smell. You have to do it like me, really get into it. Use your hands, c'mon."

"No, this is gross, m'not touching it." Lena folds her arms and tries to hold her breath, because she is absolutely not sticking her hands in whatever that is. "This is the worst thing I've ever smelled. I've had a pumpkin spice latte before, I'm pretty sure it shouldn't smell like this."

"Right, because real pumpkins are supposed to smell like lattes," Alex laughs, scooping the inside of her pumpkin with_ gloves_ and a giant spoon. "You have to rip it out yourself your first time. C'mon, just once. Actually live the experience, Lena."

"I don't want--" Lena starts to say, but Kara pouts at her, and fuck it, she sticks her hand inside and pulls some out, slimy tendrils wrapping around her hand and wrist and arm, and_ shit--_it's like it gets worse when she touches it, smell wafting up and making her gag. "I can't do this, ew fuck, gross."

"This is a family event," Alex scolds her, laughing, and Kara looks guilty enough that Lena finally figures out what's up.

_"_I swear to god, Kara, if you gave me a shit pumpkin on purpose, I--"

"It was Alex's idea," Kara says immediately, like a shit criminal on the first forty-eight. "I just do what she says, she's the mastermind blame her."

"I heard you went to MIT," Alex says, hands raised in the air like it's a defense. "I assumed you'd know how to pick out a decent pumpkin, quality education and all that."

"I hate both of you," Lena says, a little too convincingly, but her hands are covered in rotten pumpkin, and she's panicking a little because she doesn't want to smell like this all day, so she can't be expected to control the tone of her voice. "Shit way to treat a guest," she mumbles, and feels a little sour about it.

But Kara runs over before she can frown too much, cups Lena's hands between hers so the smell is sliding between the both of them, and says, as bright as anything, "It's okay, I'll help you clean it up."

The restroom is a little out of the way, and Lena's a little bitter she has to walk it, but Kara holds her hand the whole time, and--there's something about sharing rotten pumpkin with her that makes Lena think, _yeah_, she's still a tree falling in the forest, but Kara definitely hears it.

The rest of the day goes just how Kara said it would. There's a line-up of bands on the main stage, mostly country covers, and mostly just Alex singing the words to them. Lena gets to try hard cider and apple cider donuts and watch Kara eat a thousand maple donuts. And she gets to drink beers and go on a hayride and listen to Alex give her shit when she asks about the selection of IPAs. Then she eats corndogs and popcorn and walks through the pumpkin fields and pie contests with Kara until the sun is low enough in the sky that all the families with children are heading home.

It's pitch-black out by the time they head to the bar, and Lena's had enough cider and beer that she keeps leaning into Kara, and Kara's had enough to be bold enough to reach out to hold her hand, and _Alex _has had enough she doesn't even comment on it.

It only takes a couple pitchers before Lena's practically snuggling Kara in their booth in the back of the bar. It only takes _one_ shot before Alex switches from giving Lena shit, to riding Kara. 

"Kara does amazing singer impersonations," she says, leaning forward over the table and smiling big enough, Lena knows she's in for a treat. "If you buy her more drinks or blink at her pretty enough, she'll demonstrate."

"It's not - I'm not _amazing_, don't listen to her," Kara says, slurred and cute and_ pink. _"I'd call my impersonations subpar at best--everything's just lodged somewhere between Marina Diamandis and Perrie from Little Mix."

"I don't know who those are, but this is me blinking pretty because I can't afford drinks," Lena says, squeezing her hand under the table. "I wanna hear an impersonation and I wanna hear it _now_."

"S'not fair," Kara gushes. "Your eyes are like, both blue and green. And I've been telling Dave this bar has crap lighting for as long as I can remember but somehow they're still finding a way to shine."

Alex snorts, so loud Lena thinks she's maybe choking. "She's definitely drunk enough, or just caught up on you. Blink a few more times and she'll hand you the keys to her jeep singing _marry you_."

"Don't listen to her, everyone knows I only break out the Bruno no earlier than third date or if m'really desperate."

"She's so desperate she asked me to go through her sock drawer for perfect socks this morning and kept saying they weren't good enough when I texted her pictures."

"_Alex_\--" Kara coughs.

"She's gonna keep embarrassing you if you don't get up and sing," Lena says, only a little smitten, only a little bit plotting to steal Kara's entire sock drawer. "It's your only out, I'd say you take it before she pulls out the embarrassing pictures or first kiss stories."

"You mean the time she broke her date's nose, or the other time she--"

"I'm going, I'm going," Kara announces loudly, fumbling her way out of the booth. "It should be illegal for you two to team up," she says, and then she's off, Lena watching her trip her way through the crowd, smiling wide whenever she catches herself on someone.

"So you two live together?" she asks, looking at Alex once Kara's at the song box picking through songs.

"I have other places I can be, if you're worried," Alex says fast. "Trust me, I want to hear that less than you don't want it to be heard."

"No, I - it wasn't what I meant, was just wondering. Sorry," Lena says, and doesn't say anything else until Kara gets back.

"There weren't a lot of songs in the queue," Kara informs them, sliding next to Lena again and immediately taking her hand. "It's up next, and like, it's going to be good. If you're gonna make me do it, gonna do it right."

"I know exactly what you're going to sing," Alex laughs.

And Kara's face lights up, free hand flinging to cup Lena's ear when she yells, "Shut up, it's a surprise."

So, Lena has to sit with Alex giggling and Kara shaking her head for the next two minutes, and then the current song stops, and the next song starts. And Lena's heart stops dead in her chest. The room starts turning and her head feels stuffy, and she feels like tears are choking up so fast, she has to pretend she's scratching her nose on Kara's shoulder just to clear them out.

Alex is rolling her eyes and saying, "I knew it."

Kara's looking smug.

Lena keeps thinking _fuck._

She keeps thinking_ jesus fucking christ, _because _fuck_, because _fuckfuck_. Because of all the songs, of all the _Lana_ songs, Kara had to pick _this_ one. She had to pick the single song that never fails to shred Lena's heart to scraps with just the opening bars because it was the only thing she played on repeat after she fucked her life to fucking pieces years ago. The only thing she plays when she just wants to have a good cry and hate herself and hate life and remind her heart why she's not worth loving. When she wants to remember just how shitty things are, she plays _this_ fucking song.

_God_, it's like Kara's a heat-seeking missile aimed directly at dismantling Lena piece by piece. It's like she's determined to destroy Lena, to single-handedly be responsible for her final undoing, like she's gripping Lena's trigger and haphazardly patting her finger against it. Because the thing she does best, apparently, is rattle Lena up.

_It's just a song_, she tells herself, _it's just a song, a dumb fucking song that doesn't mean anything about anything_, but she's wrong and she knows it. Because it's not about Lana or the melody or the words, even, it's about the fact that she was too out of sorts to switch the song after she called off her engagement, so she listened to it and listened to it and listened to it until every second of it was lined with how much she was hurting. So now it's not just a song, it's _her_ song, the one she falls apart to over and over again. And she can't listen to it and survive or be happy or _not cry_, especially not in front of people, but--here she is, waiting for Kara to sing it to her, and she _hates this_.

"Picked one where I could really show my range," Kara says, like she's proud of herself, like a nail in Lena's coffin. Then she leans over and drones, in perfect harmony with Lana, "_Carry me home, got my blue nail polish on. It's my favorite color and my favorite tone of song._"

"Oh," Lena says reflexively, clearing her throat because it's... _good_, it's so good. Kara's voice is like the melted chocolate in the middle of a peanut butter kiss cookie, but also gritty, scratchy, like sandpaper over rough-cut wood inching out the notches until it's even. Lena feels like her skin is crawling, like she's a bundle of jittery energy and she needs to talk or do something just to dissipate it, because Kara's voice with Lana's song is hollowing her out in all her icky places and making her pain want to filter through the tears pressing against the backs of her eyes.

"_I don't really want to break up, we got it going on_," Kara drags out, low and deep, so dizzying Lena keeps swallowing and counting her breaths just to keep her head slightly above water.

"God, _shit_, it really is good," she comments, trying her best to ignore the blood pounding in her ears. She hates this, she hates this, she hates every second of this, from Kara's too blue eyes, to the perfect way she rasps out the beginning of words, to the dumb way Lena's chest tightens with each note, making it harder and harder for her to breathe, let alone keep smiling. The last time she heard this song she was knee deep in tears and self-pity and enough depression she could barely get out of bed. And now it's all washing over her like a baptism of fucked up feelings she doesn't want to have right now mixed with an insurmountable amount of desire to fuck her tongue into Kara's mouth right in front of everyone.

But she doesn't want to be weird, so she sucks it up and watches Kara grin as she tilts her head, raising the pitch of her voice to sing, "_It's not easy for me to talk about, I have heavy heart strings. I'm not simple, it's trigonometry--_"

"Thought I was in for a shitshow, but you're a professional, apparently," Lena cuts in awkwardly, to drown out the sound. To drown out the fact that Kara's singing is too good and too bad and too much all at the same time, to drown out the fact that she doesn't know how to handle it and she feels nauseous. She finally understands what Lauryn meant in _Killing Me Softly_, because Kara's definitely strumming her pain, plucking her apart relentlessly. She doesn't know what to do with her hands or her tense shoulders or the frown threatening to tug at her lips as she watches Alex giggle and Kara flutter her lashes and Kara lick her lips and Kara be too pretty to exist.

"You could always do Vegas impersonations as a side job, if it came to it," she says, and she doesn't even know what she's talking about at this point, feels so dumb just rambling shit. But it makes Kara start giggling, which means she _stops singing_, so Lena figures she's on the right track.

"No, I mean it," she goes on. "You're great, really."

"Think the bartender mistook IPA for Cuervo," Kara laughs, cheeks scrunched up and pink. She's using her regular voice now and Lena would move a mountain to keep it that way. "Lena's on a higher plane of existence right now. She's not even hearing correctly in our dimension."

"Yeah, right," Alex joins in, laughing too. "Think the hard cider's getting to her MIT braincells."

"Oh my god," Lena coughs, smiling now that they're joking again, now that she can feel some of the tension start to release. Now that Kara's belly laughing and it's warm enough to dwarf the sound of that _dumbdumbdumb_ song. "Last time I ever give you a genuine compliment if 'm just gonna get attacked for it."

"Attacked?" Kara gasps, as astonished as _Tiffany "New York" Pollard_ sputtered Beyoncé. "You do realize you both were equal parts responsible for bullying me into this, right? I'm just singing out of self-preservation at this point," she says, then leans over so her mouth is nearly brushing against Lena's ear as she drops her voice and joins in the song again - "_Because I'm going deeper and deeper, harder and harder. Getting darker and darker, looking for love, in all the wrong places_."

_Fuck, _Lena thinks_, this isn't good isn't good isn't good, _her mind repeats as she lets Kara drop her hand and squeeze her thigh, as she lets herself get lost in Kara's voice and warmth and intoxicating presence. As she stops herself from breaking in half by letting her mind imagine Kara's pretty lips actually pressing against her ear, instead of wallowing in the darkness and sadness and coldness this song brings.

She imagines Kara's hand hot on her bare skin, not muddled through her thick jeans. She imagines Kara kissing her. She imagines Kara pressing her down and sucking her up and_ marking_ her up, thoughts getting more and more intense until she's tangling their fingers together and breathing hard enough that Alex's face is buried half in her mug to hide her shit-eating grin. It doesn't matter, though, nothing else matters right now--she's either going to drown in this song and her own worthlessness or drown in Kara.

And one of those seems like an infinitely more pleasing way to fill her lungs. 

Lena lets her head tip to the side, keeps tilting until she feels Kara's face pressing into her hair, feels Kara lean in more, slurring the words of the song as she glues herself to Lena's side and trails her hand up her thigh getting breathier with each syllable.

It's enough that Alex goes from grinning to confused to shocked to acceptance, and finally excuses herself. Enough that Lena decides she's happy being a stone in Kara's water even if it isn't safe or healthy for her to sink this fast. So she turns, and then she's kissing Kara.

It happens so quickly, Kara nearly topples her backwards, going from smooth and slow to shaky and clumsy in zero-point-five seconds, but she's into it, really into it, kisses Lena back immediately. She drags her lips wet and messy across Lena's, kissing her slow and closed-mouthed three four five times before she flicks her tongue into Lena's mouth, so soft and warm that Lena feels a thousand times more drunk just off this moment.

Drunk off Kara's broad shoulders and big hands and the smell of her cheap perfume accentuating the sweetness of the wine in her saliva. Lena just wants to lick her all up, drink her in until she's poison, hold her and never let go because she's in deep enough that her MIT braincells have stopped working.

She's in deep enough that it feels right to press her face in more and suck the spit right off Kara's tongue, wrap her lips around it and scrape her teeth on it and shift up against Kara's hot palm like it's instinctual she drifts into her. 

Then something must snap or break or register in Kara, because she pulls off blushing hard enough even her forehead's reddening. And Lena doesn't want to think about _that_, not right now, because this song is six minutes long and it's still fucking going, so she starts shoving Kara out of the booth, grabbing her hands and shoulder and eventually her shirt to drag her to the restroom.

Kara stumbles after her, mumbling something as the red on her face deepens, but Lena isn't listening. Lena has too much blood rushing to her head, to her chest, between her legs, to care what Kara's saying. So eventually Kara stops, and then she's hunched over Lena, tripping their feet together and touching her everywhere at once like whatever she was worried about doesn't matter anymore.

When they finally make it inside the restroom, Lena drags Kara into a stall and locks it behind them, lets Kara walk her backwards until she's smashing against the wall and Kara's toppling on top of her, hot and heavy like fire in her arms.

She lets Kara smear her thumb across her lips, rough and salty and slippery, lets her press it inside Lena's mouth and rub her spit all over her lips and chin until Lena feels _dirty_ and her chest aches from the way Kara keeps licking her own lips like she wants to be the one to clean her up. Then she lets Kara cup her face with her large palm, lean her head back, and lick right into her mouth again where her lips are parted, where it's slick and messy and sticky enough to hold their skin together.

This time it's like something breaks in _Lena_, like something cracks, splinters, stretches too tight and her strings start snapping.

Her ears finally tune out the song, and then it's just Kara, _too much Kara_\--Kara kissing her hot and clumsy and desperate, like Lena's water in a desert, like she's a reverent being that actually deserves to feel _good _ and not just used.

Kara's so present, so _there_, so solid against her, as her mind ricochets between _stop_ and_ go_, _stop _and_ go go go_, chest pressed flush to Kara's as Kara holds her head steady with her fingers gripped tight in her hair. She's kissing Lena like she means it, like Lena doesn't just taste _good_, but she tastes like something Kara needs a third plate of, like something Kara wants to drown in. Lena can tell she's _trying_ to be gentle, trying to kiss Lena deep and slow, but it's like she can't help it when she bites Lena's lip or scrapes it with her teeth or grunts when she breathes, because she wants it so fucking much she can't control herself. Lena keeps trying to blink out of the dream, keeps trying to filter through the daze and snap back to reality; she's never been kissed like this before, never felt like _this_ even during her best sex, and it's overriding the little piece of her still holding out and screaming _make good decisions_. 

_This_, kissing Kara, it feels so much--_too much--_better than Lena anticipated--the way Kara's holding her to the wall with her hand on Lena's hip, the way Kara's thighs tense and grind when she pushes one between Lena's legs, the way she feels toned in every single place that Lena touches her. 

It's so easy for her to get lost in it if she shuts her mind off and lets her body take over, if she rides on instinct and not rationality, if she doesn't fight the thought that she's caught up on Kara and dumb enough to risk being destroyed by her. It's terrifying, really, how much Lena wants her, _needs her_, needs to impress her, have her attention, her approval, her everything. How she chases after Kara's lips every time she pulls back to breathe, craning her neck painfully when Kara keeps her held down, because she wants to drag Kara back to her, desperate and needy and too clingy, but she can't stop herself, she can't _stop_. She reaches out and presses her hand underneath Kara's undershirt, over her abs, her warm, soft skin drawn tight over defined muscles, and she groans low and involuntary against Kara's kiss-swollen lips.

She's never wanted something so much in her entire fucking life, not even an exaggeration. So much so her breaths are coming in ragged by the time Kara pulls off and drifts her hand from Lena's waist to her belly, brushing at the waistband of Lena's jeans before sinking to the skin just below it. She stays there a moment, fingers ghosting against the impression the elastic of Lena's underwear left in her skin, hand fisted in Lena's hair holding Lena back from kissing her as she looks at the little sliver of skin she's exposed and licks her lips.

"This okay? Is it too much?" she asks, eventually, looking up with all the crystal blue persuasion of her eyes.

Lena shakes her head, lazily tilting it from one side to the other, eyes blurry and dazed. "I'm not sure," she says, stomach curling in on itself when Kara's hand stops inching across her skin. Then it splits out of her, "_I want you to keep going_," flooding from her lips without her brain even thinking it.

Kara presses her forehead to Lena's and just looks at her a minute, breathing against her lips as she thumbs the button on her jeans. Then she kisses her soft and slow, and kisses her again and again before she asks, "You want me to touch you?" lips trailing against Lena's so fucking wet, joined together with their spit. 

Lena arches her back off the wall, grinding against the hotness of Kara's palm as she mumbles, "Yes," broken and needy and too far gone to even hate the way she sounds.

"God," Kara murmurs, eyes fluttering shut. "Been going crazy all day just watching you in my clothes." She palms up Lena's belly, under her shirt, back down again, trailing over the front of her jeans. "We don't have to do anything, though, I wasn't - if you don't--"

"No, please, I want it," Lena says, grabbing her wrist and dragging it back to the waist of her pants. She wants it, _wants it wants it wants it_, is all she can think about.

"Okay," Kara says, sweeping across Lena's lips with her tongue, fingers fumbling to undo the button on Lena's jeans as she keeps her head steady with her other hand and shifts her hips against her thigh. "I want it too, so much, _god_, m'just glad it's not just me, feel like I'm, like I can't contain myself."

She tugs Lena's pants down around her hips, dragging her underwear with them, cool air telling Lena just how wet she is, and it's only _now_ that her head starts swimming with the absurdity of the situation: Lena Luthor with her pants around her hips in small town bar restroom, with some girl she barely knows panting against her mouth and acting like she's actually something worth desiring. Jesus Christ, Kara wants her _so_ much, wants her so bad, after she thought for so long that no one in their right mind would ever want her for who she is, _knowing_ who she is. Especially not someone with their shit together, someone as pretty as Kara, as stable as Kara. She's like a fairy-tale and she's falling apart thinking about Lena filling out her old fucking flannel.

"Please," Lena begs again, arching her back filthy and aching, and Kara shakes her head like she actually cannot fathom what she's watching.

"Right, yeah," she whispers, a weird mix of nerves and determination. Then she trails her hand up the inside of Lena's thigh and - she stops short.

She stops for too long for it to be _just teasing_, hand perfectly still with Lena throwing her head back and making a sound between a moan and a wordless complaint.

When Kara doesn't say or doing anything for a while longer, she nudges forward and encourages, "S'alright, you can, just go, just do it."

But she can _sense_ the tension in the air when Kara sucks a breath in. "_God_, wait, um - I'm - I'm so sorry, but I don't think, I mean we _shouldn't_."

"Kara," Lena says, eyes snapping open, brain shuddering, fluttering, exploding, spitting out plausible reasons for _this_ to be happening, all bad and scary and demeaning, so Lena near-_begs_, "No, we're, _you--_just touch me, _please_, just. It's okay, I want it, I swear."

"No, I - I, we can't, I mean, you know--" Kara's panicking, Lena can tell she's panicking, must have caught up with her how fucked up Lena is, how much she actually _doesn't _ want to do this, not with Lena. "I want it too, I _do_, just not--not like this, not--this isn't a good idea, I don't think."

"What do you mean?" Lena asks, trying to be neutral, but she knows it comes out mostly a sad, defeated whine.

"I just mean, like, this probably isn't something we _really_ want to do, not right now, at least."

"You mean_ I'm_ not a good idea, don't you? This isn't something you want to do with _me_," Lena mumbles, and this time she _does_ hate the way she sounds, hates the way she _feels_. She keeps waiting for the flood of _wanting_ Kara to dissipate, for it to catch up with her mind that Kara is _something she can't have_. But it's not - she still wants her, wants her so much, too much, wants her enough she's willing to beg or bare her soul or make a fool of herself right in this moment. "What do I have to do?" she pleads. "Just tell me. What do I have to do to make you want--"

"Hey, hey. Whoa whoa whoa," Kara rushes out, removing her hand from Lena's thigh like she's ripping off a bandaid. Then she pulls her underwear and pants back up and get her hands on Lena's shoulder, like she's trying to steady the both of them. "You _are_ a good idea. I want you, I swear, I want you so much, but not in Dave's restroom, or - jesus, I'm so sorry, I am, this is fucked, I know, after all this--" her hands are shaking, _shaking shaking shaking_, "but let's slow down, okay? Today was good, wasn't it? I think this'll - this could make it not good, and we don't want that, right?"

Lena wants that. She wants sex, she wants Kara, right now, inside her. But it's obvious it's not happening, like an ocean's settled between them and they're suddenly divided, so she goes with the current. "Okay," she says, shoving everything as far down as possible, preservation instinct kicking in. Then she remembers to perk herself up and bright her eyes and _smile_, because she's happy, fucking _happy_. "You're right, yeah, of course. This is dumb, we should - today is good, let's not make it bad."

"Good," Kara says, "good. Let's keep it good."

The next twenty minutes feel like an eternity. She keeps waiting to shut down, for a drop to happen, but Kara won't let it. 

Kara won't stop holding Lena's hands, and dragging her fingers through her hair and kissing her cheek and squeezing her shoulder and whispering that _she's pretty_ and _so good_ and _so great_ and that she _feels_ _so lucky. _And she keeps _keeps_ asking shit like _you're okay, right? _or _you'd tell me if you weren't, right? _ or _you know it's important to me that you're okay, right?_

So Lena keeps getting these waves of nauseous desire, keeps pressing her face in Kara's shirt and taking in her scent and squeezing her thighs together, remembering how Kara's fingers felt against her lips, in her mouth, rubbing up the inside of her thigh, imaging what it'd be like to be split open and clenching around them. She keeps having to squeeze her eyes shut, so much yearning it feels like her body's a complete wreck, like she's breaking in a hundred pieces and she doesn't even have the words to describe what Kara's done to her.

When Alex offers up shots, she takes two, and then she lets Kara hug her tight and dance her in circles while she tries her best not to cry from any one of the four-hundred emotions she's feeling right now.

She's still hanging on by a string, though, so no matter how hard Kara tries, it's pretty much inevitable that she snaps off and crashes to the floor.

Her break-down comes in three parts--the first a slow realization that she was half-naked in front of Kara and begged her for sex and was so disgusting and vulnerable she feels embarrassed about it.

The second part is seeing Kelly Olsen in the bar.

The third part is watching Kara's eyes light up when _she_ sees her too.

"Oh my god," Kara whispers, then shouts, "_Oh my god_, _Kelly!_" ungracefully untangling herself from Lena before she runs across the bar and smacks into Kelly hard enough she nearly throws them both on the floor.

Lena doesn't know Kelly, not particularly, just seen her around, but they've been in enough of the same circles for Lena to feel vomit building in the back of her throat.

Kelly feels like a slap of Metropolis she doesn't _need_ right now, not while she's wading waist-high in confusion about Kara.

But she's there and beautiful and wearing designer clothes, making eye-contact with Lena as Kara points in her direction across the room. She doesn't want to be seen like this, doesn't want her old life to meet her new life, where she lets her bare ass touch a restroom stall-wall and gets turned down by the town handywoman because she's not good enough. She doesn't want Kelly to take this back to Metropolis and suddenly have a team of reporters showing up to talk about what a piece of shit Lena is and how she's somehow cracked lower through the bottom of _rock-bottom._

She feels so dirty now that Kara's not holding her, feels dirty thinking about the dried spit on her lips she didn't bother to wash off, and Kara's filthy fingers pressing in her mouth. She feels sliced up, diced apart, gross and small and insignificant.

She smells like outdoors and not enough deodorant, and her hair's rucked up where Kara messed in it, and she wants to disappear. She wants Kelly to stop seeing her, to stop existing, wants to disappear so much she feels like she's having a panic attack until Kara wraps her arms around her again and starts walking her toward the pool tables. "C'mon, there's four of us now, gonna play teams in pool and kick Alex's butt," she explains.

But Lena can feel herself crashing, sinking worse than she was before, and she _knows_ everyone is the enemy when she's like this, and _fuck_. If she could just go back to kissing Kara, maybe it all would be better, but Kara's already abandoning her again to cling to Kelly's side, smiling wide with her plump, crimson mouth as she begs Kelly, "Come on, tell us something interesting, please, I love your stories."

Kelly eyes Lena a second, like she's the juiciest story she can tell, then she ruffles Kara's hair like she's a puppy and laughs, "Kara, you know I can't tell you anything about cases. It's not ethical."

"C'mooon, you're the coolest person we know," Kara argues, sitting on the edge of the table as Alex smiles and shakes her head, chalking the end of a pool cue. "You have to tell us something, anything, nothing identifying."

Lena doesn't really want to stick around for this reunion, so she announces she'll get another round of drinks for everyone, and Kara hops off the table to hand her a crumpled up twenty, and say, "Anything you want, alright?"

Anything she wants turns into four five-dollar shots of cheap hard-alcohol, and a burning in her chest every time she looks at the pool table and sees the three of them laughing. So she sulks at the bar a minute until someone nudges one of her shot glasses and asks, "Special occasion?"

Lena doesn't bother responding, just looks over and sees eyes as shockingly blue as Kara's, attached to a guy who's just as beautiful.

"That bad, huh?" he asks. "You're gonna need more shots than that, and probably of something better." He knocks his fist against the counter to get the bartender's attention, then holds up four fingers and says, "The good scotch."

Lena bites her lip and decides it's this or feeling claustrophobic with Kara, so she finally says, "I can't afford that."

"It's on me, don't worry," he says. "Mike, by the way."

"Lena," Lena says, grabbing a glass as it's slid her way and knocking another shot back. This one settles somewhere deeper inside her, and she appreciates that. "Lena Luthor, if that matters to you."

"Mike Matthews?" he says, like it's a question, blue eyes bright enough that Lena gets a flash of Kara in them. "Saw you dragging Kara Danvers off to the restroom earlier."

Fuck, that makes Lena nauseous just hearing it, so she grabs another shot and takes it, pressure building in her head telling her she's had far _too much_. "Yeah, so, what about it?"

"She didn't do anything, did she? Not what you wanted," Mike says, leaning across the bar, inching the two glasses in front of him toward Lena. "We used to have, like, a _thing_. But she dropped me because - I guess - she said she couldn't understand how someone could have sex so freely, sex with just anyone. She always said it like I was tainted or something, with that weird self-righteous thing the Danvers' sisters get. Sorry, just saying you seemed happy before you went in and you've been different since. Don't take it personally with Kara."

That one _really_ makes Lena feel like throwing up, assuming it's true, because she's had enough drunk sex to turn up even sex-positive noses, which. God, _fuck_, it makes sense, what he's saying and she hates the twist she gets in her gut. "You just been watching me this whole time?"

He shrugs. "You're new, it's entertaining figuring you out."

"You're never going to figure me out," Lena mumbles, and against her better judgement she takes a third shot of Scotch.

Thankfully, Mike drinks the last, then he nudges her arm and says, "Maybe. Wanna get some fresh air?"

Lena looks back at the pool table and Kara's not even bothered she hasn't returned, laughing hard enough Lena can see how red she is from across the room. So she decides, "Yeah," and asks Mike to grab her a beer for the road.

It's cold outside, chilly enough Lena shoves one of her hands under her armpits, but decides her beer is important enough she can risk freezing off at least some of her fingers. Mike pulls out a spliff ten minutes in and lights it up, blowing smoke rings for a while before he offers it to Lena.

"Want a hit?" he asks, angling his hand out.

"No," Lena says immediately, shaking her head, fingers aching around the cool beer inside the glass bottle.

"Why not?" Mike laughs, blowing smoke through his teeth, scratching at the side of his beard. "Too good to have a smoke? I saw you knocking back shots like water, and it's _this_ you have pause about?"

"No, it's not that," Lena frowns. "It's just never had much of an effect on me."

Truthfully, she hasn't tried smoking since boarding school, but she remembers coughing a lot and not having a good time. She also remembers finding the secret stash of boxed wine and enjoying that infinitely more.

"You're probably just not doing it the right way," he says, then takes a long drag and shoots out a perfect smoke ring that Lena just wants to poke her finger through. She takes a sip of her beer instead and prepares herself to be mansplained. "You have to hold the smoke in your lungs, like, real deep. That's how you really feel it."

"I think I know how inhalation works," Lena mumbles, really debating whether her beer's worth the tingling she's getting in her fingers. "Think I tried that, and it didn't work out. Like I said."

"Okay," Mike says, and then he's in front of her, suddenly, tall and warm and a bit welcome with how stiff the wind is hitting Lena. Then he says, lips dark pink and glistening when he smiles, "If you're doing it right, then it _should_ have an effect. Here, I'll show you. You inhale when I exhale," he adds, and he sucks a deep drag in, leans in close, and -

Lena let's him press his lips to hers, doesn't back away or push him off, just braces when she feels the soft tickle of his beard and his slightly damp skin against her mouth, stuck to her spot like she's paralyzed. She breathes in the smoke he puffs out, not deep like he said, but shallow into her lungs and then she doesn't _hold_ it, just exhales _loud_, coughing it up just like she remembers she did last time, chest spasming as she bends over and tries not to throw up all the alcohol she can't afford more of.

"Jesus, Lena, I said _hold_ it," he says, getting an arm around Lena's waist and helping her right herself. "I thought you knew how inhalation worked."

"Fuck you," Lena spits, trying to rip the awful taste from her mouth, taking sip after sip of her beer to calm her raw throat. "I told you it's no good for me, so drop it."

"Hey, okay okay, m'sorry," Mike surrenders. "I wasn't trying to get you worked up, just seemed like you were trying to make your night a little better and I wanted to help."

"Why does everyone give a fuck about how I feel around here?"

Mike steps close enough Lena's knuckles are rubbing against the warm fabric of his shirt. "Can't speak for everyone, but _I've_ had that look you have, had it for a while. I don't know, I was supposed to be the golden boy, right, pride and joy, but instead I'm the family fuck-up, so. I've dealt with some shit, too. I just - I thought I'd offer a friendly face, just wish I'd had that from someone, you know?"

"I guess," Lena says, feeling--_appreciating_\--being among fellow fuck-ups, actually. "Fine, I'll try again, but let me hold it."

"Alright," he laughs, handing it over into Lena's shaking hand. "Try not to hurt yourself."

"Fuck you," Lena says again, and then she puts it to her lips and inhales as deep as she can.

It feels like shit going in immediately, but Mike presses in against her, chanting _hold it hold it_, until he finally says, "Alright, exhale now," and then he kisses Lena the moment she blows out the smoke.

She wants to push him off, but it feels like all the drinks and the smoking is catching her at once and she can't get control of her arms, so she turns her head instead, but he drops his lips to her neck and starts sucking.

And that's when she _sees her_, sees Kara, walking towards them from the front of the bar, and Lena's completely frozen.

She can't move, can't say anything, can't _do_ anything about this. She didn't even want to be in this position, but she's here and there's no explaining out of it or reasoning it away. Some guy is sucking her neck right outside the bar and Kara can see it, is walking _towards_ it, so Lena's defenses are up the moment she realizes there's going to be a confrontation.

She expects a scene or anger, punches flying and Lena crouching on the ground to hold her spinning head. She expects yelling, disgust, Kara finally telling her just how shit she thinks Lena is, but.

But once Kara's close enough, she just taps Mike's shoulder until he pulls away, and focuses her eyes on Lena, _calm_, so calm and even and terrifying, slightly. She does a good-as-fuck job of holding her face steady, right up until Mike swipes his thumb across where he was sucking, and Lena's guessing there's a mark from the way Kara's eyes darken. It hits her, then, what Mike said--about having sex freely and being judged and Kara being self-righteous or what-the-fuck ever, and it makes Lena's lungs hurt because her whole plan of impressing Kara just went out the fucking window.

"Hey, um, you should come back, play pool with us," Kara says, voice low like a whisper with weight behind it, like Lena's the dog-shit she has to pick up solely because she's responsible for it, not because she cares about it. "We um, we wanna do teams, so I need you."

She reaches for Lena's hand, then, wraps her fingers around where Lena's holding the beer. And it's so warm, so welcoming, like the home Lena's always needed, and she instantly wants to melt into Kara, wants to be held by her again and told she's okay. She wants to go back to having her face smashed in Kara's shirt, go back to being wrapped in the world's best hug, but she feels--_god_, she feels so fucking grimy, mucky, slimy, so fucking _unclean_ under Kara's eyes, _probably judging Lena _eyes, that she just - she wants to cry.

And wanting to cry makes her feel defensive, makes her put her shield up, makes her feel anger bubbling inside of her, fucked up and self-hating, and she - she fucks up.

It's like watching a movie, like dissociating and watching herself cut off her own foot, because she pulls her hand away.

She pulls away and she opens her mouth and instead of anything that'd be good to actually say, she says, "I'm out here because I want to be. I'm not interested in playing pool with your friends, sorry."

And then she watches Kara flinch like Lena physically burned her.

And_ isn't that fucking something_, Lena thinks, since Kara was all fine fucking with Lena's head and making her think they had something and then leaving her hanging--_i'm not interested in having sex with you, sorry_\--as soon as someone more interesting showed up. Maybe she figured out Lena's just a drunk, just a screw-up, just too sexually promiscuous to deserve Kara Danvers. Maybe she's dumping Lena like she dumped Mike and adding to her pile of family black-sheep who's hearts she broke. Lena doesn't need Kara, she just - all she needs is _herself_.

So when Kara grabs her hand again and says, "Lena, I - really, we should go somewhere and talk, or--"

Lena snatches her hand back and snaps, "Don't be a creep, just leave me alone."

"Lena--"

"Alright, Kara," Mike jumps in, putting his hand on Kara's chest and nudging her away. The farther she gets, the colder Lena feels, the worse she feels, the more she realizes she's, _fuck_, she's so dumb. "She said back away, so back away."

"Mike, you don't know her," she hears Kara say.

"And you do?" Mike asks.

Lena wants to say something, but she can't, like she's glued to her spot, like they're too far away to reach even though it's just a couple feet.

"You look desperate, Kara," Mike is saying. "Not all of us fit your expectations, just accept it, alright? Leave us alone. Just walk away, this is a bad look for you."

"Yeah, and me beating the crap out of you is gonna be a good look for you, right Mike?" Kara asks, snatching his shoulder too hard.

"Really, KD? Over _this_ girl?" he asks, fear setting in his voice for just a second, before he clears his throat in a way that makes Lena's belly turn on itself. Makes her feel worthless and disgusting, like she deserves whatever comes out of his mouth next, even though she _knows_ it'll be bad.

Kara's lip twitches like she wants to say something, wants to step in, but she doesn't. For the first time tonight _she doesn't_, and it's almost eerie how much Lena _feels_ that, how much she aches, how cold she gets when the chill sets in her bones.

"Seriously, Kara," he goes on. "I know we've had our shit in the past, but this isn't a hill worth dying on." He says it like a fact, like Lena's _dirty_, like she's so inherently worthless, he can point it out in front of her and it doesn't make a difference. Then he leans forward and adds, loud, like it's not even supposed to be a whisper, "She's probably gonna move on to someone new ten minutes from now, just like she did with you. We're just having some fun, leave us alone. Just let her go, she's probably not _good enough_ for you, anyway." 

And that one hits Lena like a splitting axe, cuts her just a little too deep, opens her up and carves her heart out and throws it on the ground right under the ten-year old run-down boots of _this guy_, just so he can line-dance on it.

That one makes her wish Kara _would_ take a shot at him, makes her wish she'd knock his teeth out, makes her wish she'd do something--_anything_\--to vindicate the fact that Lena feels like crying over some guy that amounts to six squirts of cheap cologne and too many shots of whiskey.

But Kara just smiles herself, face softening into a weird fondness that Lena can't pick apart as genuine or sarcastic, and then she claps his shoulder, big hands sinking in the old fabric of his shirt, and says, "For the first time in your life, I think you may be right."

And it stings.

Stings so much, Lena hiccups a sob down loud enough she's sure they both can hear it. But no one notices. _Kara doesn't notice_.

Kara just looks at her with her cold eyes and her weird smile and tells her, "Alex and I are gonna head back to Midvale tonight, but I'm sure you'll find yourself a way back in the morning. Good luck with--" she waves her hand through the air, then drops it. "--having fun. Use protection."

She opens her mouth like she wants to say something else, cut a little deeper, add on to the hurt, but instead she just - she leaves.

She _leaves._ She turns around and walks away, never bothering to look back, and _god_.

Lena's chasing after her before she can catch her next breath, dropping her beer, brain disintegrating into incoherency even in her own thoughts, mind scrambling with a mix of hurt and confusion and rage, _so much fucking rage_.

All she feels is rage and anger and fear and heartbreak and rage rage rage, so the only thing winning out when she's caught-up enough with Kara in the cold night air is her _need_ to put Kara in her fucking place.

"Is that what you think about me?" she spits out, voice wavering so much a tear actually falls. She can tell she's crumbling. She can tell the foundation is giving out and the ship's going to sink soon, but she can't stop following after Kara, can't get herself to turn around and choose self-preservation over what-ever-the-fuck she's going after with _this._ "Really? Is that what you fucking think? I'm just a piece of meat to pass around?"

"That's what you think about yourself, Lena," Kara says, not slowing down or looking back or raising her voice. It's like she doesn't even care that Lena's behind her, that she's _falling apart_, like she couldn't give two shits about what the fuck happens to Lena tonight. "You put yourself in that position, not me. If you wanna make big girl decisions, you'll deal with big girl reputations."

"Thought you didn't care about reputations, thought you only cared about finding out who I am for yourself," Lena shouts, hating herself, hating how she sounds, hating the way tears keep falling as she chases after Kara like a puppy just dropped at the shelter.

"I think I learned a lot about you today, and from what I've seen it'll probably be a hard pass for me, but thanks for asking," Kara says back, so calm it's like she's just ordering eggs with her bacon at the diner.

It feels like nails are scraping against Lena's skin, painful and scarring, long drags to sink in deep cuts.

And she gets this _dark_ thought, ugly thought, that this is what her mother felt like when Lionel just walked away, and - and it makes her feel like she can't fucking _breathe_, like she can't get air.

So all she wants now is to make Kara _care_, make her feel, make her have an emotion that's not indifference. She wants to make her _turn around_.

And that's maybe why she bites her lip too hard to choke back a sob, before she yells, "You're an asshole, you know that? You're a fucking asshole that pretends she's some nice girl, but - but you have a lot of mean shit to say for someone who's supposed to be kind-hearted."

"Here we go again," Kara responds, like she's not even affected, shoving her hands in her pockets as she exits the bar parking lot and starts down the street towards the field. "The princess isn't getting her way so she lashes out at me again. Aren't you tired of singing the same ol' song?"

"I'm just calling it like I see it," Lena shoots back.

And, for some reason, _that's_ what gets Kara to snap around, suddenly too close to Lena with her mens' bodywash and blotchy cheeks and blood-shot eyes. Like she's been crying all along and doing a hell-of-a better job at hiding it than Lena is.

"Are you blind, then?" she starts, waving her arms before dropping them against her sides again. "Because from the way you talk, I'm guessing you don't _see_ anything. You look at something and then you distort in your head until you're not even recognizing what's in front of you. You should get your vision checked, or maybe get some fucking therapy, or for once in your life look in the mirror and--"

"I'm sorry," Lena shouts, cutting her off because she doesn't want this fight to go down _that_ road. She doesn't even want to fight, doesn't know _why_ she's fighting, she just - she just wants Kara to be nice to her again.

But Kara screams, "_I don't care_," so loud Lena's teeth rattle when she jumps, body trembling afterwards to match the way her tears start cascading down her cheeks. She's like a bursted dam, shards flying off her armor as the water finally breaks through. 

She doesn't know what she wants. She doesn't know what she wants. She doesn't _know_ what she _wants_, or how to fucking fix this, but she--she just--she, _fuck_. She's crying so hard the vocalizations are ripping out of her, and it's ugly and stupid and embarrassing, and she wishes she never followed Kara out of the parking lot, or came to this festival or ever got the fucking letters about the dumb house in Midvale.

She wishes she could disappear for good, forever, go somewhere that'll finally make everyone happy.

"Jesus, just come here," Kara says, and then she's pulling Lena towards her, pressing Lena's face into her flannel that smells like old spice, probably, and outdoors and smoke from the bar and warm-familiar-sweet _comfort._

She's wrapping her arms around Lena, _tight_, tangling her fingers in her hair and cradling her close, so fucking gentle, like if she handles her too roughly she just might break her. Which is dumb and a waste of time, because Lena's already splintered with wide, spreading, split open cracks, and she doubts there's a single person in the universe that gives enough fucks to handle her as gently as she _actually_ needs.

_No one except Kara_, she thinks bitterly, and then she drop-kicks that thought as she presses her face further in Kara's shirt, smearing her snot and tears and spit and dignity, if she even had any to begin with.

"The only thing I'm sorry about is yelling," Kara says against her hair. "But I'm not gonna--I _can't _let you cry while I just stand here and watch it."

She says something else, Lena registers it vaguely somewhere, but the sound around them sinks away, further and further and further, until Lena's stuck in her head with just her thoughts and nothing else.

It's the last place she wants to be, but it's like a fucking safe haven compared to being with Kara out _there_.

So she stays there, she stays in her void, in her diamond-lined gutter she made her bed in, and doesn't register anything for god knows how long.

Not until she feels Kara pushing her away, feels her hands everywhere at once--rubbing her shoulders and warming her own hands and brushing her hair and wiping her tears from her eyes. It's only then that the fog starts to fade and everything comes back into focus.

It's only then that she hears Kara chanting _you're okay you're okay you're okay_, like it's a liturgical prayer.

"I'm okay," Lena tries to say, but all that comes out is a sob, and that just makes Kara more firm, for some reason, like chanting it will make it true.

"You're okay, it's okay, it's _okay_," she says, again and again. "You can't attack me and then cry or run away every time I don't lie down and take it. I don't know how your other relationships worked, but that's not a healthy way to go about it."

Lena just makes another ugly sound, and it's probably a pitiful sight--her shaking and Kara giving her a proper lecture, but she can't pull herself out of it. It's like now that she's unleashed all of her ugly and Kara's somehow still standing here, she never wants to be pretty again, because things feels good just like _this_, at least for a little bit longer. She just wants Kara to hold her hands and talk to her gently and tell her she's okay and take care of her.

And, yeah, _fine_, part of her does want Kara to lie down and take it when she yells, but the larger part of her loves that she _doesn't. _

"I only attack you when you upset me," Lena finally says, and it's choked-off and gross, so she takes a couple steps back like distance will replenish her shield or help regain her composure. "That's why I get upset when you hit back so hard."

"Right," Kara huffs, nodding like she's thinking hard about something, then her face relaxes. "I think I used to have your problem."

"I don't have a problem," Lena says, still hiccuping and stuffy, and not sure why she keeps fucking fighting. 

Kara sighs. "Lena, can we just? For one second. Just follow me, alright?"

"Yeah, m'sorry, go ahead."

"I was just saying I--and I'm not trying to offend you, but--I used to have this problem where I'd lash out if anyone did anything to upset me. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no telling what would upset me, and I wasn't exactly handing out explanations, either. But the problem with that is it makes the other person feel defensive, getting yelled at, called names, prodded at, especially when they don't know what they did wrong."

"People know what they did wrong, they just don't want to admit it," Lena says, wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve. 

Kara just looks at her for a long second and Lena can tell she said something fucked.

"Either way," Kara goes on, "I learned that whenever I felt like insulting someone or yelling or hurting someone just for the sake of it, I should just state what the problem is, instead. And whenever I felt like getting defensive I should just calmly disagree. Most importantly, I learned that you should _listen_ when others talk, show you're listening, and then express how _you_ feel in a way that doesn't hurt the other person's feelings. I think we should try that."

"That's a lot of rules," Lena says.

"Okay," Kara says instantly. Then she sucks in a long breath, nods, and twists away from Lena. "Cool, um, I'm - I'm just gonna walk to the--"

"Christ, _fine_. You're not a creep," Lena jumps in, because the thought of Kara walking away again physically hurts. "I - I didn't mean that when I said it. I just didn't want you to touch me because I felt... sad. And angry, I guess."

"Good," Kara says, turning back around. Lena hates the way her body relaxes when she does. "Why? Tell me why you felt sad and angry?"

"Because I felt worthless, okay? Is that what you want to hear? Is that the right fucking thing to say?"

"You're lashing out again," Kara whispers, like she's tired.

Lena rubs her hands over her face and, _god_, she hates this. It's fucking hard. "I already feel shitty and ripped apart, and your solution is for me to be even more vulnerable with you. It's not that easy or simple. _That's_ the problem. This is a stupid fucking solution."

Kara just blinks at her exhausted, defeated, _over it_, and it finally sinks in for Lena, hits her like a boulder just how thin the ice is underneath her feet.

And then - then she's tearing up again and she feels useless as all hell for still crying, but she figures she's got nothing left to lose but Kara herself, so she starts explaining, "The song brought back all of these bad memories, and I wanted you to stop singing it, but I didn't want to make things weird because we were all laughing before. So I let it go on too long, and--I don't know, kissing you made those feelings melt away, and then _you_ wanted to stop, and--please, just say something. Say you hate me or whatever, so I can just move on."

"Lena I don't hate you, where do you even get these things," Kara finally says, finally _softens_, and then she walks forward and grabs Lena's hands to squeeze them. "Thank you, alright? I know it's not easy, okay? But thanks for trying it, anyway. I'm sorry about the song. I'm sorry for what happened in the restroom, I should have - I wasn't thinking, god, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for not introducing you to Kelly properly."

"That's not, I didn't - _don't_\--"

"She's Alex's girlfriend, okay? And I haven't seen her in literally forever. But she's pretty important in Metropolis, so you probably know who each other are, and I know that maybe made you anxious, so I'm really sorry I didn't pick up on that earlier."

Lena's tears just start pushing out harder, because it _did_ make her anxious, and she wishes Kara saw it or said something or did something or did _anything_ other than ignore her for a fucking eternity.

"I'm sorry I made you feel worthless," Kara says after a long second, running her thumbs over the backs on Lena's hands. "I don't - _didn't_ mean to, I just, I--I want to have sex with you, of course I do, but I want to get to know you more than I want that. Right now, at least. I don't want this to be just a quick thing, a sex thing, for it to flare up bright and burn me. I want _you_, in a healthy way."

"Why do you think we--" _no_, _that's not it_, Lena thinks. "Why do you think _I_ can't handle sex right now. Having sex doesn't stop us from getting to know each other. What is it about me that--"

"Because it seems like you're not in a good place," Kara interrupts her, pressing her lips together, the little crinkle between her brows settling in like it did in the car when they first met. "And I don't want to move too far too fast without you being ready for it. I know I'm not in your head, and can't decide that for you--but this is my heart too. These are my feelings too."

"You don't trust me to be good enough for you," Lena says, more to herself than Kara, realization kicking in that she's been dragging Kara through the mud the same as people do her whenever _she_ opens up, the same way she's done to everyone since her engagement and she deserves whatever shit treatment she gets. "That's fair, you're probably right to not trust me, protect yourself."

"No, I didn't mean it that way," Kara says, eyes so focused on Lena, she can practically feel it on her skin. "I just meant that--I don't _mind_ throwing myself at you, but--I don't _want_ to throw myself at you if I feel like you can't catch me. And right now it doesn't look like you're willing to do an _OBJ_ for me or anyone else. But that's okay. I know you're trying to heal, but I swear you don't have to beat me up just to do it. I'm in your corner, not in the ring with you."

"Okay," Lena says, instinctually stepping closer to Kara because the night's suddenly _too cold._ There are so many parts of that she wants to comment on, but she knows the only thing that'll come out is how much she doesn't deserve someone like Kara. And she has a funny feeling that Kara wouldn't like that.

So, instead, she takes enough breaths to calm herself, blinks a few tears away, then asks, "What's an _OBJ_?"

"You know, like, the _football player_," Kara explains, and Lena can see the exact moment it registers on Kara's face that Lena in fact does not _know, like, the football player. _"Oh my god," she gasps, squeezing Lena's hands, eyes bright enough Lena can't stop herself from leaning in more. "You're not serious? Odell Beckham jr? 2014 Giants versus Cowboys? The greatest catch in NFL history?" ([x](https://youtu.be/zxbz3DDQzHU?t=44))

"Kara, I speak english, not whatever the fuck that is," Lena frowns, then catches herself and remembers _the rules_. "Sorry, I mean I don't understand sports references, so please don't use them."

Kara actually_ laughs_, just a tiny bit, lets her eyes squint closed and her head tilt down, laughs open and soft and beautiful and amazing.

Then she looks up, eyes sparkling in a way Lena definitely doesn't deserve, and says, "You're catching on quick, I appreciate that."

"I don't want to fuck this up. You're not so bad to have around."

"Yeah, m'really not," Kara says, staring Lena over for a long second afterwards, nibbling her lip and letting it slide from beneath her teeth slowly. She has so much potential to be bad, but somehow she's decided she'll be better than good. "I don't know what Mike said to you, but I wasn't in the best place when I dated him, so I _was_ an asshole. That - I'm better than that now, alright?"

"It doesn't matter what he said," Lena whispers, which isn't entirely true, but she wants it to be. She wants to believe Kara and trust Kara and listen to _her_ words and not someone else's. "It only matters what you're showing me, right? Not what someone else decides about you."

Kara shrugs. "You can listen to him, if you want. Nothing wrong with caution. I'm just saying it's not the best description of me _now._"

"Okay," Lena shrugs back. "I'd rather trust that, than trust him."

"Good," Kara says, pausing for a second before she clears her throat awkwardly. "So, umm," she stretches out, swaying like she's nervous. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but would you like another hug? One without crying? For making up?"

"Kara," Lena says, mouth suddenly like cotton, like her saliva's all dried up. 

"I think it'd be good."

"Kara, I--" Lena pauses, heart somewhere down in her belly because she made Kara _cry_.

The same girl that turned bright-red when Lena kissed her, the one that brought a hotdog picture instead of dredging shit up from Lena's past, the one that stopped in the middle of _the worst storm since 1972 _just to save a stranger--Lena made _that girl_ walk away in tears and echo a scream off of nothing and _grass. _She somehow managed to burn her after only two days together and nothing but kindness from Kara. Lena may not be the best judge of anything, but she knows for a fact she does _not _deserve Kara Danvers.

"Sorry, I just don't think--"

"C'mon I'm serious, I think it'll help," Kara jumps in, smiling a little, genuine even if it isn't as bright as it normally is in her eyes. "This is the final time I'll ask, though, so if you say no I'll take it, and we can just walk back into the bar, side by side, room enough for jesus between us. Or you can stop fighting me on everything and let me give you a hug. As a friend, or at least someone hoping to be. Nothing more than that."

Lena kicks the toe of her shoe against the ground and twists that around in her head, thinking _i don't deserve her or this or anything this good ever in my life_, then clears her throat and asks, "What if I want it to be more than that?"

Because if she pushes away everyone that takes an honest chance on her, she's never going to survive this.

"That'd be good, because I want that too," Kara says, eyes blue and earnest in contrast with the cold, dark of the night.

Of course she'd say _that_, because she's perfect and scary and makes Lena want to run away fast, so fucking fast, because it feels weird and foreign that she actually _wants_ to _stay_.

Kara's also frustratingly right and Lena _should_ take her time and set healthy boundaries, so. "What if I'm not ready for it to be more than that yet?"

"I'd say good," Kara smiles, and it's like a weight lifts off Lena's chest, like a thousand pounds of pressure she didn't even recognize was there is suddenly drifting off of her. "If you're admitting that, then you're taking a step in the right direction."

"Yeah, but how many steps are you willing to wait around for?"

"As many as you need, I think, as long as you respect me."

Lena drifts towards her. Against the scary pull inside her, she drops her defenses and steps close enough they're touching. "You don't know me," she says, looking up slow, breath catching at the way Kara drinks her in.

She wants Kara to touch her, wants her to pull her in and kiss her again in that way that made her feel like her knees were giving out. But Kara won't, she won't do it and it's maybe the best thing that's ever happened to Lena--someone cares enough to_ not_ fuck her.

"You keep saying that, but, I don't know, I guess sometimes taking a chance bites us on the ass, and sometimes you win the lottery," Kara whispers, letting go of Lena's hand and curling her finger in her shirt. "I'm not usually the type to be short on hope, so I won't start now."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Kara echoes, pressing her hand in more so she can grab a fistful of the fabric and pull them flush together.

Lena lets her head fall forward, rests it on Kara's other shoulder so she doesn't have to sit in her own snot, and decides she's exhausted enough to try raw, vulnerable honesty for a change. "I'm sorry," she whispers, settling in. Sometimes she feels like she's been shattered into a million shards, and she doesn't even know where half the pieces are, let alone know how to pick them up. But she can tell she can at least find a few dozen with Kara. "I'm so sorry, I was so shitty tonight. I don't deserve you still standing here, I know I don't, but--"

"I'm not going anywhere," Kara cuts her off, letting her other hand go and wrapping her arms over Lena's shoulders, engulfing her in so much warmth Lena lets go of the breath she didn't know she was holding. "You keep saying I don't know you, but you don't know me, either. Stop assuming I'm like everyone else. If I'm upsetting you, tell me. I swear I'll stop. I promise. That's why I kept asking, m'not trying to trick you or anything, I really just--I need you to help me figure out how to do this right, so if I'm messing up, you have to be the one to say it."

"You didn't mess up," Lena admits. "Seeing Kelly just--it fucked me up more than it should have, reminded me of shit I'm trying to forget."

"That's fine, it's okay. I just want you to tell me stuff like that. We don't have to go back in," Kara says against her hair. "We can sit in the jeep and chill until Alex is ready."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," she nods. "Especially if it makes you feel better. And if you _promise_ to not freak out and blow up on me again."

Lena rubs her nose into her shirt, calm, comfortable, right back where she wants to be _finally_, and says, "Okay. I'm gonna try my best."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thanks for all the great feedback on the last chapter! 
> 
> tw for this chapter include: mentions of abuse/trauma + more depression
> 
> let me know if anything isn't tagged well enough. thanks!
> 
> hope you enjoy x

It's cliché to start a story with the weather.

It's what _'good'_ storytellers say, at least. No one cares about it--about the way a flower-field smells under the heat of the morning sunlight, whether it's _4:32_ or _6:27_ in the evening, how hard the wind is blowing on any given Thursday in California.

But, for Lena, this story--_meeting Kara--_started with the weather. It started with rain in the late afternoon and it smelled like plant oils and bacterial spores, and Kara's eyes were so piercing that Lena remembers every single detail of it. It's like time slowed down to make sure she was capturing the moment and recognizing its significance. It's as if, for just a second, her flicker fusion threshold mimicked a fly's and she could witness what it's like to watch something move slow when it's supposed to be fast.

She keeps thinking about that now, head rattling against the glass of the jeep window on the drive back, heart clenching as she blinks tears down her cheeks and no one checks in on her, because the nighttime darkness is stark enough to hide the fact that she's still _not okay_.

She keeps thinking about the moment she rolled down the window and first saw Kara, blue eyes bouncing off the dark-gray behind her like a sharp thorn off a rose stem. She wonders if she should have figured out _then_ that Kara's exactly the kind of heartbreak she'd welcome with open arms, that she'd fall hard enough to shatter her bones and wouldn't be able to rebuild from this one like she's done the rest.

She wonders if she remembers those moments, the little, tiny ones—how cold the air felt on her fingers or the shift in heat, the _warmth_, when she was standing next to Kara, or the way Kara tucked her hair behind her ear—because those moments are as insignificant and worthless as she is herself. No one cares about them, _no one cares about the rain_, no one cares about her. Not even Kara, not when it gets hard.

Lena’s run out of people and chances and hope and she'll never forget what tonight felt like—that horrible, dark moment, cast in shitty flickering lamplight and spliff smoke, when Kara clapped Mike's shoulder and decided Lena wasn't worth it. When she turned around and walked away and decided that Lena was worth risking her life for when Lena was just a stranger in the rain, _sure_, but she wasn’t worth a bar fight after Kara had actually gotten to know her. 

Not that Lena had any misgivings, because she's _not _worth it, especially given the circumstances--they've known each other three days, barely, and her own brother would throw her to a pack of wolves if he could--but it still hurts. It still feels like shit knowing she's so easy to walk away from when she stops meeting expectations, when she gives a little bit of resistance, when she wants to be chased and figured out and cared-for even as she digs a hole and steps over the edge like it isn't six-feet deep.

She knows the only fix for her life is to _fix_ herself, that she's not going to find hand-outs or answers in someone else's arms, but for a second there--_Kara_, she--_god. _It makes enough sense in theory, that she needs to fix herself first, but she doesn't know where to start. She's throwing water from her flooding boat using nothing but her cupped hands, and the ocean keeps throwing it back and saying patch the cracks if she doesn't want to sink, but _how_. She can't fix herself when she's actively flooding, pretty sure she needs to be on dry land for that. But no one cares about that part.

There's enough water in the ocean, after all.

No one needs her shit, too.

The car ride back goes on forever and ever, tense and silent and awkward, especially with Lena catching death glares from Alex whenever the light hits the rearview and Lena can see her eyes in it, cutting back from the front seat.

She feels so ugly and hollow and raw and nasty and dirty, because she - _god_, she made such a fucking idiot of herself and then she chased Kara until Kara took pity on her, and now that the adrenaline and desperation are worn off, she feels empty enough to want to open the car door and let herself fall out. She used to be Lena fucking Luthor and that used to mean something, and now she's just _this._

"Hey," Kara says, nudging Lena's shoulder until Lena pulls her cheek off the window, skin peeling from it like wax strips. It's the first time she's moved since she settled in, and the first thing she notices is that her head's circling. She's drunk enough she'll need someone to walk her to her room, and sober enough to feel like shit for it.

She realizes, bitterly and heavily, that she's sunk so far tonight she could probably go fracking if she wanted to.

"I'm gonna walk you in," Kara whispers, unbuckling her seatbelt before she clicks Lena's off too. "I'll walk you up, get you some water and advil, if that's okay?"

"Yeah," Lena says, too soft, wincing when she sees Kelly looking at her through the rearview too. "I mean, y'don't gotta, m'just--" she lets her head tilt against the glass again and tries to breathe away the swirl of her thoughts, before she finally just gives up. "Whenever you're ready."

"Okay," Kara says, and then she gets out of the car.

Lena doesn't feel like vomiting, thank god, she's pleasantly _too fucking drunk_, but not nauseous. Still, it's a pain in the ass just walking the little bit it takes to get to the door, and even more of a pain crossing the threshold.

So Lena takes one look at the stairs and decides, "M'just gonna sleep on the couch down here."

Kara takes one look at Lena and decides she's just _going to carry her_, apparently, because she hooks her arm behind Lena's knees and lifts her bridal, shifts her until she's in a comfortable enough spot, and starts walking like she _didn't_ just add a thousand pounds onto her slender frame. Then, like some weird sex pollen _Star Trek_ effect, Lena gets enough sniffs of Kara's body-wash, what with her nose pressed up against her neck and whatnot, that half-way up the stairs she decides she feels a little okay again.

So she asks, like a too-drunk weirdo, "Can you tell me something interesting? Anything, really, I just wanna hear you talk. Like when we were in the car in the storm, I like it when you tell me things."

"Okay," Kara says, and instead of insulting Lena or taking a jab at her to make a funny, Kara just challenges her on the weird-meter and says, "You smell like the center of the galaxy, you know? I wanted to tell you that all day, but I kept getting too nervous to say it."

Lena doesn't know what to do with that, doesn't know where to log that information in her head--under weird or cute or dumb?--so she just snuggles more into Kara's neck, and it's muffled when she says, "Thanks?"

"It's, um, an actual _thing_," Kara explains, pausing at the top of the stairs. "I read somewhere that scientists were investigating a dust cloud near the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius B2, and they found ethyl formate in it. It's the same gas that gives rum it's smell, but also, um..." Kara trails off and clears her throat loud, like she _is_ nervous just explaining this, cheeks flaming up with each second that ticks in the silence. It's actually endearing, Lena loves a good science-y pick-up line. But when Kara opens her mouth again, everything comes out small and airy. "Raspberries. It also gives raspberries their smell, so, essentially, you smell like raspberries, _crap_, I'm so sorry, Lena," she rushes out, confusing and weird and all one sentence. "I would have come back, I just. I mean, didn't _mean_ to leave you out there with Mike, but I started saying things just to hurt you, and I _needed_ to take a walk before I said something I super regretted. But I would have come back, I swear."

"Joslyn has raspberry shampoo," Lena says, and then she blinks and processes what Kara's saying, and then she admits, "You did hurt me, my feelings, but I'm not - I don't know if, is it okay to bring it up if I started it? I mean, is that fair in the rules when I'm saying how I feel?" she asks, because it's dark and friendless where she's at and starting to turn into something more violent than depression, so taking a shot at healthy feels like finally putting water-proof putty in the cracks of her boat. Even if she can't get the water out just yet, maybe she can stop it from sinking further. It at least feels better than her solution prior to Midvale, which included a cocktail of six Xanax or three Adderall, depending on how the day was feeling, and enough alcohol at night to put her to sleep.

"I know I'm annoying and mean and prickly, but what you said--it's like I poked you one too many times, so you turned around and stabbed me. I can't describe it properly, because I know it was provoked, and I feel like I was warned, but--"

"It still wasn't fair, I know," Kara says, setting Lena down on her feet, holding her steady enough that Lena can look her in her eyes without crashing to the floor. Everything feels tilted and blurry, but she also feels... _safe_. She doesn't open up ever, usually, but Kara feels like therapy in some ways, like Lena can say anything right now and she won't be judged for it. "There's a long story and explanation and history with Mike, but I don't want that to get in the way of giving a genuine apology and admitting I was wrong." 

"Okay, I, _thanks_, for saying that," Lena says, small and breakable and more honest than she's ever heard her voice come out. "I didn't think you'd say anything about it, honestly, probably deserved it, but thank you."

There's a huge gape in her that wants to flat-out ask Kara if she's a _good person_.

She wants to say that _she's_ not a good person, that she's a shit person, herself. She doesn't have any friends, no one loves her, she pushes everyone away. She can't sink any lower than she is now, and she's not saying it as a challenge to the universe, to be proved wrong, she's saying it because sinking lower for her is... it's _dying. _That's her next step, and as fucked-up as it is, she's accepted it. She doesn't have _anything_ anyone can take from her, not even dignity at this point. It doesn't matter what anyone throws at her, she'll just think she deserves it. So if Kara's just here to watch the spark fade from her eyes, then _tough shit_ because someone, _everyone_, already got here before she did, and she should probably go back to scrolling Tinder for desperate victims, or something.

Lena's not going to say any of that out loud, though, of course not, because it'd all sound like a too sad, too drunk monologue, but she gathers that Kara gets the point because she smiles.

"Of course 'm apologizing. I was upset and I was allowed to be, but the way I handled that was wrong. I can tell I won't get too many apologies with you, though, so I won't make it a habit. Just wanted to - hopefully we're on good terms now," she says, bright and golden, dropping her eyes like she can't help herself, like Lena's lips aren't too dry and too cracked, like she'd kiss her again if the night hadn't ended with both of them fucking up in some way. "Anyway, I think we're both really tired, and I can't stay again, I - but I'll call you once I'm home, can stay on the line with you tonight, just be there and not say anything, if it helps you sleep?"

"Okay," Lena says, and then Kara helps her to her room.

> _ **New York Times** _
> 
> _November 1, 2019_
> 
> _BREAKING NEWS: Lex Luthor Finally in Custody After Anonymous Tip-Off_

Lex never said _stuck between a rock and a hard place_ like everyone else does; he always said trapped between Scylla and Charybdis. In some ways, a lot of ways, Lena always knew he meant her and Lillian.

She knows exactly who it was that tipped off the authorities.

She's just not sure _why_.

She ends up in the library an hour after seeing the headline, an hour after scrounging up granola in Joslyn's kitchen. She figures she could go to the diner, probably find Kara there, but there's a little piece of her teetering on the edge today. She has a bit of an idea what it is that's prodding beneath her skin, but she can't figure out why it's not relief, happiness, _serendipity_, why it's - of all the things, why all she feels is edgy.

She should be happy that Lex is locked away, is the thing. When she went over core beliefs with her therapist and had to pinpoint the first time someone explicitly let her know she was worthless--well, it was Lillian--but then it was _Lex_.

He'd approve of her enough to string her along and get her hopes up, but then he'd shoot her down when she got them the highest. He always knew how to word it, though, how to make the hurt cut lower than skin deep, but at the same time make Lena want to come back for more. It was abuse, not just psychological, but physical. He'd run human experiments on her and say they were _having fun_, nudge her until she fell out of trees and say it was an accident, be friendly enough afterwards that Lena thought she didn't mind smiling through a chipped tooth if it earned her a _big brother_. She eventually had enough bruises, Lillian sent her away to an all girls boarding school, because even _Luthor money_ couldn't explain that many broken bones. She never got a hug, though, never got cards for holidays or invited back home. And the only reason she got a _job_, is because she had two-dozen options by the time she was set to graduate from MIT.

It was strategic and smart and _Lex_ to pick her back up and control her, put her right back in the middle of LuthorCorp and her childhood--the shitshow that she'd escaped from for a couple happy years of fucking college. Imagine if she'd just gone to another corporation, _god_.

She should _not_ feel upset today. He's gone. He's gone. _He's gone._ He's a monster and she hopes he gets locked up forever. But he won't, she knows that, and even _now_ it feels like he's taking a little piece of her with him.

She can't pinpoint exactly what _that_ is until her eyes snag on a copy of _The Crucible _in the fiction section and she realizes... it's _her name_.

He took her name. He took years of her rewriting the Luthor stereotype for herself, years of building her own brand and forging her own path and being _good_ like she's always wanted to be. He took that and trashed it through the media in so much fucking smear, that she legally switched herself to being called Lena Kieran.

He took her fucking name, and that's - it was the last thing she _had._

It takes her ages to walk around the library, but it's calming enough she gets herself to stop thinking about Lex for a little bit. The library is by far the largest building in the town, and Lena can understand how it'd be rated one of the best in the country--old, brick, bright, four floors with a tall ceiling and enough windowed alcoves that Lena feels right at home.

She eventually curls up in one of them with an old book of poems, loses herself in the words and the warm hug of the sunlight for god knows how long, until someone says, "This is my favorite spot, too," and her attention is moved from the page, to - oh. It's Kara, because of course she'd find Lena. "The sun always hits this window at just the perfect angle for reading."

"Aren't we poetic today?" Lena asks, folding the book closed and squeezing her thighs around her hands. "What do you have there?"

"Sandwiches," Kara says, holding up a to-go box and shaking it a bit. She has her hair down, curls less messy than usual, wearing a grey sweater over a button-down, with dark jeans cuffed at the bottom over her tan, leather desert boots. At least it makes sense why Lena's falling apart over a woman she hasn't even known a week, why she's still wearing her socks she borrowed yesterday. Kara fucking Danvers could charm the knickers off a nun, if she was up for it. "You weren't at the diner this morning, so wanted to make sure you ate after drinking so much last night. But I _also _saw the news this morning, and thought you might want a few hours to yourself."

"Thanks," Lena says, and scoots to make room for Kara on the bench she's on, holding her breath when Kara sits because it's something about her _smell_ that drives Lena hysterical. "And thank you for the space. I _did_ need it."

"Figured." Kara grins at her, wide and toothy, snapping the box open as she nibbles her bottom lip. She takes her time piecing the sandwich apart and hands Lena the larger half. "I love your lipstick today, burgundy looks good on you."

"You mean I don't stick out as much as I think I do?" Lena jokes, knocking shoulders with Kara as she takes a bite. "How are you feeling about last night? I'm absolutely mortified I'll tell you, should make a pact to forget it."

"Don't be, like I said--Mike and I, there's history. And everything else was - you were doing the best you could last night, alright?"

"That's one way to think about it, I guess," Lena says, then she quirks an eyebrow, and lets herself smile. "So you're going to tell me about that history, then, yeah?"

"It's mostly sad," Kara says, but she's smiling too, so Lena feels like she's actually going to get a break from _her_ problems. "You really want to know about it, or you're just messing with me?"

"I really want to know," Lena says. "Plus, it's always sad, isn't it?"

"I feel like we should unpack that," Kara snorts, taking a bite of her sandwich and chewing with her mouth slightly open. Lena doesn't know why she's attracted to that, but this is getting out of hand. "Anywho, I don't know. I was young when we fell in love, and so _so_ dumb."

"Details," Lena demands, licking mayo off her finger.

"My first time was with him."

"Disgusting, too many details," Lena frowns.

Kara laughs letting her head tilt over and her bangs fall. "Careful what you wish for," she says with a mouthful, then sighs real long after she swallows. "I guess we brought out the worst in each other. He was bad, I was good. He was good, I was bad. And for a second, we were both good."

"Then?"

"I went to college in National City, right? I wanted to stay there, but he didn't want to leave here. He kept acting like it was _him_ or NC, like I was leaving him, not just chasing my future. So, I did the right thing, I think, and started a job there. But the whole time I just kept thinking about him."

"You said the city was too big," Lena remembers. "Please don't say you came back for _him_."

"I said I was dumb, didn't I?" Kara retorts. She shrugs. "It wasn't just that, but it was a huge part of it. It was also my dad, though. He got sick, cancer, and Alex stuck around to help mom take care of him. I had a job for seven months in NC, working for Cat Grant as an assistant, and - I don't know. I just kept thinking that everything I needed was back _here_, you know?"

"Cat Grant?" Lena mouths, lowering her sandwich. "Kara, that's huge. You could be running - um, I mean, so it didn't work out?"

"No," Kara says, like she's still a little hurt about it. "For seven months I was falling apart over him, and when I finally left my job and decided to come back here, I found out that in that time he got _engaged_." She frowns for a long time, at her sandwich, like suddenly she's losing her appetite. "It didn't work out for them, in the end, and I tried not to feel happy about that, but either way. That was the end of us. I just took over my dad's hardware store after he was gone, and never really thought about doing anything else after that - er - _this_."

"I'm sorry to hear about your dad," Lena says, uncomfortable in the silence that follows, because talking about dead parents isn't necessarily her forte. She gives it a few seconds before she asks, "Did you ever try contacting Cat Grant again?"

"No, she was pretty clear she thought I was throwing away my life and should lose her number, and she was right, of course."

"_Hey_," Lena says, wiping her hand off on her thigh before reaching over to grip Kara's knee. "You didn't throw your life away, alright? You chose a different path for a while, but nothing's stopping you from going back, you know? Whenever you want."

Kara plops her sandwich down in the container on her other side, rubs the crumbs off her palms carefully, and then grabs Lena's hand into hers as she stares at her a second. "I think the bigger question is what's stopping _you_ from going back. If your brother's guilty, why is your life over?"

"It's complicated," Lena sighs. "It's also... _sad_, unfortunate. Dumb."

"You don't have to talk about it. I know you know that, but just want us on the same page."

"I think I want to talk about it, about this at least," Lena decides, watching the way Kara's eyes travel over her face, like she's using every cue possible to check in on Lena. "You don't owe it to me to listen, though. It's just been on my chest all morning, if you're interested."

"I'm here for anything you feel comfortable enough to tell me," Kara says, stretching a hand out towards Lena's sandwich. Lena hands it over since she doesn't feel like eating anymore, either, and then she lets Kara nudge her into a cuddle, her back pressed to Kara's chest, feet planted on the soft cushions of the bench they're on. "I'll listen to anything you say, I swear."

"Okay," Lena says. "Yeah, so, I um," she fumbles, unsure where to start. She remembers walking towards the elevator up to her apartment, and then she remembers--_fuck_, maybe she'll just go from the beginning. "I don't remember it as a continuous stream, some things are completely gone. But that's pretty common, they say, after an _event_. It all started, though, when I was updating the LuthorCorp security infrastructure and something weird kept coming up. There were all these things behind firewalls I didn't know anything about and I thought it was strange. So I found a way to get through them and... I saw some things it was obvious I shouldn't have seen.

"The documents?" Kara asks. "Alex mentioned them when she said you did the right thing. So you _did_ leak them?"

"Not at first, no. It wasn't even in the question. I just - there wasn't just documents, you know, there were other things, too--videos, audio recordings, so much shit I didn't leak, enough to rip down three-fourths of corporate America, maybe _more_. And at first I didn't know what to do with that information, how to process it or bring it up or if I _should_ bring it up." She pauses and sinks a little further into Kara. "Lex found me first, though, before I had a chance to come to my own conclusions, before I could even formulate how to broach the subject."

"He tried to talk you out of it?"

"Talk?" Lena spurts, half anger, half laughing, twisting her hands until her fingernails are gripping too roughly into Kara's skin, probably. But she needs to hold on to _something_ to get through this. "He kidnapped me. He drugged me, tied me up, took me to an abandoned warehouse and hit me in the eye hard enough it was black and swollen shut, blood vessels splintered all the way down my cheek." Lena grits her teeth together and remembers the way she cried hard enough her body was convulsing, because she was _sure_ she'd lose her eyesight. "Then he told me he could do whatever he wanted with me, that he controlled me, that no one cared about me, that I wouldn't have a cent to my name once he was done with me if I didn't keep my mouth shut."

"_Jesus Christ_, Lena," Kara whispers, tightening her arm around her.

"I holed myself up when he let me go," Lena goes on, pushing through the flood of blackness that takes over her mind whenever she tries to think about this. "And like an idiot I went ahead and leaked shit, anyway, because - because--" _Because_ she was fucking fed up, because she was tired of being told what to do, tired of being worthless, tired of being the victim and controlled and put under other people. She was just fucking_ tired_. "I don't know - I just leaked the documents, none of the other shit, and just the stuff that was incriminating enough for _him_ and his close partners to get put away for a while. I didn't show myself for two weeks after that, was pretty sure he'd murder me. Then my name got leaked to the media as the whistleblower, probably him as well, and Lillian black-listed me first chance she got. Not that she even had to, I wouldn't have gotten hired anywhere, anyway. Not with everything I found that night. Not with everyone on red-alert about the fact that _Lex_ was going down."

"Why? If anything, you could use it to leverage getting--"

"Kara, that's not - I don't want to _do_ that. I don't want to _have_ to do that. I don't want to be a Luthor in that way or work for a company responsible for the shit on those videos."

"Sorry, I - it just doesn't seem fair, especially your mom after what Lex did to you."

"It's okay," Lena says, which isn't the truth in any way, but she can't even blame Lillian for what she did. "She didn't know. I just did it in haste, out of fear and anger and _stupidity_, so it blindsided her and I wasn't even there to help her clean it up, so. She did what she had to do."

"You should tell her," Kara says, like someone naive enough to wholeheartedly believe Lillian Luthor would even give a fuck. "I bet it would change things if she just knew the reason--"

"She doesn't care," Lena cuts her off, in the best way she can say it and not come off rude. She feels so tense, so shaky, and usually this would be her cue to shut shit down, but for some reason, just when she's with Kara, she gets this urge to scream all of her hurt and pain at the top of her lungs. "Do you know how many times she's told me she loves me? Just take a guess."

She can hear Kara swallow against her hair, palms twitching on Lena's skin like she does _not like_ where this is going, almost as much as Lena does _not like_ knowing the actual answer. "Probably not enough times if you can actually count them," Kara tries.

"Not even once," Lena says. "She's _never_ told me she loves me, not once in my life. _That's_ how much she cares about me."

Her breath halts the second she says the words, the moment they leave her mouth. Kara hugs her tighter in response, and--for the millionth fucking day in a row Lena starts crying.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hi, i know i put in the tags that this is a lot of angst, but i still feel bad for the sheer amount of angst, so thanks to everyone that's stuck along with it. i think we're starting the journey into the healing side of things with this chapter, which also isn't always pretty, but you gotta walk through the bad shit sometimes to get to the good shit.
> 
> anywho, the feedback on this has been amazing, and i love getting all the comments/asks and knowing this is something that actually feels real/relatable for people. i always do too much shit in the notes, though, so i'll stop rambling and let you get on with it.
> 
> really hope you enjoy the chapter/continue to enjoy the story!

In 1958, psychologist Harry Harlow wrote, _so far as love or affection is concerned, psychologists have failed in their mission. The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation, and the little we write about it has been written better by poets and novelists. _

Love, as a scientific concept, is almost unfathomable. Attempting to quantify self-sacrifice, trying to elucidate consciously made self-destructive decisions in the name of another, reducing _the face that launched a thousand ships_ down to_ activity_ in a _limited expanse of cortex -_ just, it_ feels_ like fundamentally missing the mark.

Lena loves Lex.

If he came in her room right now and told her _sorry_, she'd probably forgive him. Maybe not right that second, but eventually.

It's what she's always done, what she always _will_ do, because accepting he's a monster, accepting he's unchangeable and nothing about _her_ can ever _fix_ him, no matter how _good _she is, or _smart _she is, or _useful_ she's trying to be. Accepting she still loves him despite that fact is, _god_, it eats at her, because she doesn't know what that means or what that _makes _her.

Weak, maybe? Stupid. Dumb. As much of a fool as Lex says she is whenever he laughs about her coming up short.

She loves him in an ugly, distorted, desperate and depraved part of herself, in the same place she loves Lillian, and she wishes she could rip that piece of her out and forget what it _feels_ like, but she can't. She's too weak to do it, so instead it strips her like rust on metal, like hydrofluoric acid in a bathtub. Because her _family _is piece-by-piece breaking her apart, dissolving every inch of who she is and wants to be, and she somehow can't figure out a way to _not_ love them as they're doing it.

She doesn't want to think about it, though.

She _hates_ thinking about it. So after Kara drops her at the B&B for the night, she spends a few hours in a haze before she falls asleep, then she wakes up the next morning aching in some far-corner of her brain, convinced that yesterday was a fever-dream, because Lex has always been larger than life and _she_ set shit in motion that got him taken down.

Then she fucks up, one singular second of letting her mind slip, and she thinks about it and thinks about it and _thinks_ about _him_, scrolling through every news headline on Joslyn's out-dated desktop, eyes glued to the _illustrious Lex Luthor _with his smiling face and friendly descriptors like _smart funny successful charismatic brilliant_, and nothing about the fact that he's _abusive controlling manipulative scary_ _life-ruining. _

Lena scrolls until she feels like crying, clicks until her hands are shaking, starts actually reading through the articles, and—

She decides she needs a drink if she's going to get through this.

So she rips the B&B apart until she finds a bottle of bourbon in a cabinet in the living area, dusty and old, but still good enough for the mood she's in. Then she puts two ice cubes in a smiley face mug, pours herself a modest amount, and heads back to the computer.

Two cups and five shittily written articles later, she's tired of making the back-and-forth trip, so she just brings the bottle back with her.

It's half-gone when she finally decides to give up on the articles and check her email. It's mostly shit—people trying to get an interview about Lex being caught, people trying to figure out which hole she's crawled in, workers trying to figure out what she did with all her old mock-ups _ha ha fuck them,_ she thinks_,__ as if they can take her job her life her everything _and_ her fucking creativity._ Lillian has another thing coming if she thinks that shit will fly, whether or not Lena was under contract when she came up with most of them.

She takes another drag straight from the bottle, hands sticky on the neck where she's dripped on her fingers, then she sees _16 missed emails_ from _Samantha Arias_, and her throat nearly presses the bourbon back up.

She swallows it down again, hard, then takes another drink, licks the splash off her fingers, and clicks them open.

The first one came ten minutes after Lena pressed send, apparently—_H__i Lena, where are you? Are you safe? I've been trying to locate you, but no one knows where you are. _Then there's a slew more, increasingly more panicked, _ Lena, seriously, are you okay? _and _Where did you go? Are you still there, can you still respond to me?_ and _Please, just tell me, just one word or 'I'm okay', anything_, all the way up until one sent an hour ago that says, _Okay._ _T__alked to Andrea, and she says the email you sent came from Midvale, California? Are you still there? Did Lex get to you? Just. Respond to me, Lena, if you're safe, I need to know. _

Her heart rate picks up reading them, can't tell if she's in trouble or if Sam really cares, or if she's just too drunk to process this. 

She clears her throat a thousand times and keeps blinking blinking blinking, trying to figure out if this is all even real, let alone what it _means_. When she surmises it is, and she doesn't care if Sam hates her or not because she just wants to _talk_ to her, she types out, _i'm ok in mdvale, ya_, then she giggles at her screen, curses at an article still opened in one of the tabs, presses send, and heads upstairs.

It's 12:27 and Lena's drooling into her pillow when her room phone rings.

She misses grabbing it the first two times she reaches over, but when she finally picks it up it's Kara saying, "Hey," and Lena's mouth goes dry where she's slumped in the bed. "Missed you at breakfast again, wanna meet me at Hank's around one for lunch?" she asks, then pauses a second, and Lena contemplates all the shitty life decisions she's made, including _this one_, and adds it to the list of reasons Kara's never going to have her pressed against a wall again. Because even if they stay friends, she'll never want to fuck Lena after she's seen her like _this_.

Eventually Lena's silent long enough, Kara clarifies, "You don't have to, but it's always good to eat, so thought I'd ask."

"Okay, be there," Lena mumbles, trying to hide the slur she feels in her throat, then she hangs up.

She rubs her hands over her face for a good two minutes afterwards, like if she does it with enough force it'll just wipe the drunk right out of her. When it doesn't work, she stumbles downstairs to the kitchen for plan B.

She needs to sober up, she needs something more than bourbon in her body, she needs to not be a complete and utter mess in front of Kara again, but when she makes it downstairs there's just a half-full bag of _cuties_ in the fridge and a pack of mini-waters, neither of which she's sure she's allowed to touch. She eats three oranges, anyway, chugs two waters, strangles her hair into a, well, _pretty shit_ ponytail, and then makes her way outside towards the diner.

It's just a ten minute walk on flat land during a beautiful day, but she feels likes she's leaning sideways since she's had shit-all to eat and has half-a-bottle of regret in her system. So, it's no shock when she falls and skids her palm on a gravelly part of the sidewalk. It's a little bit of a shock when she feels hands lifting her up.

Her first thought is that it's probably Kara, with her luck, but then the person says, "I know you drank half the ocean the other night, but this feels fresh," and Lena realizes it's worse than Kara, because it's _Alex._

"You're following me?" she half says, half asks, as Alex gets her to her feet, frowning when she starts to shuffle her towards a bench to the side of them. "I know you're all weird, the _Danvers' sisters_, Mike told me, but s'not a crime—"

"To go on a bender?" Alex asks, pushing Lena down on the bench and dropping to her knee in front of her. "Sure it isn't, but—" She lets her mouth hang open like she's coming up short for words, then she just shakes her head and says, "You know, never mind. I'll leave whatever demons you're fighting between you and god. As long as you leave my sister out of it, too. She doesn't need this."

_No one needs me_, Lena thinks, but doesn't say it out loud this time, since her sob story is probably getting old. She's annoying and always sad and she keeps fucking up, and probably should have just stayed back at the B&B, so she won't add on her self-hate to this conversation. "I could go back, m'sorry if—sorry about the other night. Sorry to Kelly, too."

"What's this about, Lena?" Alex asks, pulling a first aid kit out of her backpack, grabbing out some alcohol wipes and pressing one into Lena's palm without even warning her first. "I know you're going through some shit, but isn't there some other way you should be dealing with this? Meditating with crystals or using some expensive sea-salt scrub? Cleansing your apartment with sage, I don't know, I'm sure you have money lying around _somewhere_, what are you doing falling on the ground day-drinking in _Midvale_?" 

"I'm trying to get over losing _everything I had_, not a boy I met at a rock concert three weeks ago," Lena snaps, and Alex snorts, smiling afterwards like she _expected _that. She's—fuck—she's probably just fucking with Lena, just like Kara, and _god _it's so annoying when they do that. But it seems like she really cares when she looks up, like if Lena opened her mouth and said something not an insult, she'd give an actual shit, so, fuck it. "Lex was, um, I don't know if you saw, but they _got_ him."

"I saw, but I thought you'd be—not _this_," Alex gestures, then applies the alcohol again.

"Do you know what—" Lena starts, then tilts forward when she gets a particularly strong wave of dizziness and nausea. Alex gets a hand on her belly to right her again, and it takes a second before she clears her head enough to finish speaking.

"The New York Times—" _god_, she feels like she's going to throw up "—the guy they let write the story about Lex this morning spent two paragraphs talking about a lunch he had with him a year ago and how charismatic he was," she says out loud, hating the way the words feel, hating the childish voice in her heart wanting to yell_ it's not fair_, when that's just _life_. "I found so much shit on him that could put him away for life," she whispers. "So much fucking dirt and grime and just - I could have had him dragged through the mud metaphorical and literal, and - and then I released the stuff that would only get him a slap on the wrist in comparison. Even when I finally decided I could hit back, I was still trying to protect him."

"He's your brother," Alex says, simply. 

Lena shakes her head, maybe to clear it, maybe as a reflex to say _that's not true_, or at least she wishes it wasn't. "Don't need to remind me."

"No, I just, I mean even if I hated Kara with every fiber of my being, I'd still give her a warning shot before I tried to kill her. She's my sister, my instinct is to protect her no matter what. You gave him a warning blast, and it was a hell-of-a shot, I'd say. He's looking at actual time."

"He's a Luthor, the only right course of action is to aim to kill, not to _maim_," Lena points out. "Otherwise it'll come back to bite you on the ass."

"Yeah, I bet Lex is figuring that out about _you_ right now," Alex says, and Lena's heart stutters. She's not - not super sure what to do with that. Between her and Lex, he was always the one to go _bump_ in the night, and she was always hiding under the covers. There's never been a part of her that ever thought those roles would change. "He poked a bear one too many times, and then he got poked back. I'm sure he knows next time your shot'll be aimed at a vital spot, not just the leg. I told Kara this, and now I'll tell you—you did the right thing. I don't know how many fucked up things you've done in your life, what your past is, how many skeletons you have in your closet, and I—_this_ was good. This came from somewhere inside of you that was tired of things being messed up for one reason or another. This—"

"Was self-defense," Lena cuts in, because she's not a hero or a martyr or was even _trying_ to _do the right thing_, she was just trying to _survive._

She wants to say _there's nothing noble about that_, but Alex wraps up her hand, pats her knee and says, "Good," like that ends the debate before Lena can even get it started. She lets her hand rest warm against Lena for a little bit after she says it, lets Lena blink a couple tears away, then she adds, "Sometimes the hardest battles are the ones we have to fight to get ourselves back. I'm just glad _you_ also recognize you're someone _worth_ fighting for. Because you are, alright? Try not to forget that." She stands up, then, sighing like she's breathing off a heavy weight, stretches her palm out, safe and inviting, and smiles so soft that Lena's eyes start to tear up again. "Come on, let's get some food in you, yeah?"

"Yeah," Lena says, rolling her tears off on the back of her sweater sleeve before reaching for Alex's out-stretched hand. "If it's—if _I'm_ too much, I can back off Kara, don't want to pull her down with me."

"No, that's not, just... _jesus_," Alex mumbles, biting down on her lip. She wraps her fingers around Lena's forearm, waits a second for Lena to grip hers back, and then she pulls her up into—a _hug_? Lena's face smashes right against her shoulder, nose filling up with the smell of unscented soap and a subtle shampoo as Alex wraps her arms around Lena and holds her close. It takes a couple seconds for Lena's head to stop spinning, but when it does she actually relaxes into it, letting her weight fall against Alex's body, and then she just _breathes_, slow and calming and easy. Alex feels so warm and good and nice that Lena gets an even fresher batch of tears welling up in her eyes. "At some point we all have to stop attacking each other," Alex says after a solid minute of holding her. "So, I'm sorry I said that."

"I'm sorry, too," Lena says back, not sure why at this point, just knows it feels _good_ not fighting anymore.

She feels woozy and hazy and _unstable_ by the time Alex gets them on their way, panicking to the sound of her nervous heart beat drumming in her ears. She already feels like shit and hates herself for her decisions, but _what if they get kicked out of the diner because she's too obvious or they make her leave the town or she can't live this down with Kara and it's somehow the final straw for them._ Lena spends the remainder of the walk freaking out that she's too drunk for public and this time everyone's done with her bullshit, bracing herself for scandalized stares and being outcast. But no one really notices them on the walk there or even when they walk in the door, they barely get a head to turn. In fact, the only thing that _does _happen once they're inside the diner is Kara smiling and waving them over to the booth in the back corner.

It may be a too-drunk thought, but in that moment Lena just feels _thankful_ for her, for her pretty lips and her pretty eyes and pretty hands and the ache she gets in her chest just staring at Kara, the ache she gets thinking Kara's fingers were once _sliding up her thigh_.

"Keep an eye on her," Alex says to Kara once she's dragged Lena over. Kara stands from the table with her hands out, carefully receiving Lena like she's an Olympic relay baton. "I'll let Hank know we need a hangover special and two buckets of water. Don't know what she drank, but it was a lot."

"M'dizzy," Lena slurs, wrapping her arms around Kara's waist and pressing her face in her shirt. She wants to be sitting down fucking six centuries ago, only thing worse than being drunk in public at one in the afternoon is throwing up from it in front of Kara Danvers. "Think m'dying."

"It's okay, we got you," Kara says, tightening her arms around Lena, then, like she's not even there she says, "We can't let her stay at Joslyn's anymore, not alone. She's not doing okay, Alex, god, _look_ at her. Are we supposed to just drop her back off like this?"

"No, we feed her first," Alex says, and Lena wants to say _i'm right here_, but she mostly just moans into Kara's shirt and gets rewarded with a back rub. "You don't need to sign up for this, we, I—you're not even there during the day, and neither am I. It'd just be the same thing."

"I _can_ be," Kara says. "Nia can take over for me for a week or two, she's more than_—_she can handle it, she's good at the store."

"Can _you _handle _this_?" Lena hears Alex emphasize, and her ears prick up because she's pretty sure no one can _handle_ her, but she hopes Kara thinks she can. "I'm not sure she's finished falling down yet. You'll have to catch her before you pick her up."

"Alex, yesterday, I _told_ you—"

"I know, Kara, but—"

"She doesn't have anyone," Kara snaps, and Lena freezes. She's drunk off her ass, but her mind sobers up enough for that split-second to realize the tremble in Kara's voice. "I know what that's like. When my parents died I didn't have anyone. When Mike broke up with me and you and me had that _huge_ fall-out and I was officially in National City all alone, I didn't have anyone. Do you know what it's like to not have anyone?"

There's a long pause, _long_ long and stupid and Lena thinks she might have to pee, then Alex finally breaks the silence by huffing loud and dramatic and actually giving in. "Fine, _ugh_. One of you sleeps on the couch. Breakfast at the table, _dinner_ at the table. No drinking, and no getting your heart broken. I'm not cleaning up two messes for the price of one."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Fine," Lena slurs, muffled into Kara's shirt.

"I'll go order the food, just sit her down before she vomits all over you."

Alex walks off and Kara tilts Lena's head back, face blurry and pretty until Lena's eyes come to focus, and then she's just crystal clear and pretty and far too concerned. "Won't throw up on you, honest," Lena says, voice aiming for god knows what at this point. "Good at getting it on the floor."

Kara just frowns, a stern sadness setting in her eyes that Lena would kiss away if she thought her kisses meant anything, if she thought they were even welcome after royally skidding through the last hope that Kara had of her being even a little bit stable. As it is, though, Kara doesn't even trust her to stay in a shitty B&B alone, so Lena just has to watch Kara watch her. Watch her take a second just to swallow thickly like she took a drink of Lena and isn't sure if she likes it, watch her take a breath too long and _too tired_ before she says, "We need to get this figured out," as if Lena was too drunk to be acknowledged during her conversation with Alex, but is sober enough for a serious life talk. 

"Later," Lena says. "We sit now, then food, then later."

And Kara nods.

Hangover special just means eggs and bacon and pancakes and biscuits, all seeped in too much grease and butter, but Lena's practically inhaling it. She's not even bothering to clean the sticky off her fingers, just sticking eggs and bacon in a biscuit, coating it in syrup and letting it drip down her hands until they're so gross they stick to the napkin, ripping off little shards of material whenever she tries to clean them.

Kara keeps her hand on Lena's thigh, gives it a squeeze every few seconds, shovels eggs in her mouth when the food stops flowing and Lena gets too drunk and zoned to remember what she's doing. Alex keeps the water flowing, clinks the glass whenever Lena doesn't drink enough, and it goes on like that until Lena's too full and too tired and ends up hiding her face in Kara's arm long enough that Alex finally declares, "Alright, take her home. Let her sleep it off, then have a shower. Have some advil and water ready."

"I can handle a hangover," Kara says, smile in her voice. Lena wants to look up and see it, but lifting her head seems like a monumental task at this point. "She'll be fine. I'll have stuff set out for dinner when you get home. Fettuccine?"

"Sounds good," Alex taps the table. "Water. Get her lots of water."

"It gets better," Kara says a little later, voice muffled against Lena's hair, Alex up from the table to do something, get the check maybe.

"What does?" Lena asks, because she can't imagine being hated by her only living mother and probably hunted by her brother and having a trauma history as extensive as she does is the type of thing that _ever_ gets better.

But she feels Kara's head shift suddenly, so she looks up, and—Kara has her head cocked curiously, like _she_ can't imagine a single thing in this world that a person can't get better from. There's an innocence about her, a naïveté, it's—actually, _no_, it's not that at all. Lena's not looking at someone who doesn't understand, she's looking at someone who _does_, she remembers _lost her parents_ floating through her head like she's actually just now registering the conversation Kara had with Alex, and maybe it does get better if Kara could do it. But Lena doesn't have the first inkling how to get there.

Still, she's convinced enough to nod, then she presses her face against Kara's arm again and tries to breathe the nausea away.

At some point, Kara just carries Lena to the car, gets her buckled in, and makes sure she's still breathing and shit. Lena passes out for most of the drive, wakes up only when she feels them hit a bump or something. But she's exhausted and so fucking bleary that she's out again a second later, only waking up more seriously when Kara sets her down to shuffle with the keys to open the front door.

She doesn't notice much of the house as Kara pulls her through it, too focused on her world spinning to take in the decor. But she let's Kara take her to some room, let's her lean her against the wall and pull her shoes off, shivering from how the cold feels against her bare toes. "You're not wearing socks again," Kara says, like she's genuinely sad about it. "I'll get you some more if you want."

"M_mm_," Lena hums, like a beg and a whine all at the same time, and Kara giggles as she picks her up at the waist.

"We'll get you socked and tucked in and everything will feel better and _so much_ worse when you wake up, I swear, but you'll live," she says, leaning over the bed to place Lena on it, lingering over her once Lena's on her back. Lena would very much like to lick the shine off her lips, wants to taste her again, wants to feel Kara's weight on top of her, heavy and big and suffocating. She wants to close her eyes to Kara, stop breathing to Kara. Which sounds drunk, she's _drunk_. "Do you like sharks?" Kara asks, out of fucking nowhere, and Lena just nods because she _does_? "Nice, I have a really cool pair of shark socks I can let you wear, you'll love them."

Lena resists the urge to say _i love you_, because even if it's on the tip of her tongue, it's not _true_ and it's _weird_. She's being so weird, and if she doesn't do something better, Kara's going to hate her. So, while Kara's shuffling through her sock drawer, Lena sits up and tries to straighten herself, blinks and tries to be sober. And, very eloquently, when Kara turns back to her, she says, "Thanks for, _mm_, the dinner, but m'okay now, s'gonna get some sleep."

Which is not at all what she planned, but it makes Kara laugh, and she loves when Kara laughs. _No__t love_, she reminds herself, she just _really_ likes it. "Lunch was no problem," Kara assures her, sitting on the bed and starting to fit the socks over her feet. They're thick and soft just like her other ones, red with little smiling sharks on them. Lena does love them, Kara was right. Kara's _always _right. Maybe she does love her.

"D'you want me to stay in here while you fall asleep?" Kara asks, looking up from the socks when she's done, and Lena nods because she's pretty sure she wants Kara to stay with her forever.

She hasn't been this drunk in a really long time.

It hits her once they're under the covers and Kara's snuggled behind her with her bicep under Lena's head, it hits her how alarming this must be, how weird and extra and inappropriate it must seem.

Lena wants to be better more than she wants anything else in her life. She's always wanted to be better and she's always tried, always kept trying over and over through every blow Lillian and Lex have ever landed on her, through every time she went to Lionel and he was too drunk to protect her anymore, through every time someone she loved betrayed her, through every time people loved _her_ and she betrayed _them_. She's always pushed forward and tried to be better, and she doesn't - she doesn't know why _this_ time feels different, why she keeps falling down and can't get up, why her strength isn't there anymore, why she's such a piece of shit.

She finally won against Lex, so she doesn't know why she's the one that got defeated.

She _hates_ this.

"Hey," Kara says, "C'mere, you're shivering," and Lena knows they both know she's not shivering, she's _crying_, but she's so glad Kara doesn't mention it, that she lets out a long, strained, relieved breath. Then she let's Kara scoot in closer, fold herself warm against Lena's back like they're spoons in a drawer, tangle her fingers in Lena's and trail her thumb over her knuckles. "It gets a little cold here sometimes, so I'll make sure to keep the heat turned up for you, okay?"

"Thanks," Lena mumbles, clearing her throat afterwards and sniffing awkwardly. "You don't have to do this for me."

"I don't have to do anything, technically, but some things we choose to because they're good. And they're right, so, you just do them."

"You sound like a fucking comic book hero."

Kara snorts, and Lena can feel every way her body shakes against her back. "I'm not a hero, m'just, I just know a little bit what you're going through, not the exact situation, but the _feeling_, and I want to - I don't want you to have to go through this alone."

Lena untangles her hand from Kara's so she can grab it, so she can finally run her fingers over her calluses and just _touch_ her for a second—touch her wrist and fingers and baby soft skin between all the hard parts. Kara must be able to feel it, feel the way Lena's vibrating with her pulse, feel the way her chest falls and rises just from being able to play with Kara's hand, she must _feel_ how much Lena wants her in every little moment Lena pulls to her while also pushing her away. She has to know, and she—Lena just wants to know if Kara feels that, too.

"You know what I was thinking?" Kara asks.

And Lena's so caught up in her own head, she says, "How you ever thought you wanted to have sex with me after seeing how gross I am?"

"Mmm'no, not quite," Kara says back, like she's being dumb and confused and a turd all at the same time, and Lena doesn't know why but it makes her smile. "I was just thinking that you're gonna have to take a hu_uuuge_ poop when you wake up. Like, massive. You were going through that food like—"

"Oh my _god_," Lena gasps, scratching her fingernails roughly against Kara's palm. "Stop it, why are you like this? Why?"

"Just, I don't know, it just came to my mind," Kara says, like she's actually flustered. "Thought it'd be funny, make you laugh, then you said that sad thing and I was already trapped in, no backing out." She finally folds her hand around Lena's again and snuggles them closer together. "But I'd still wanna have sex with you even after that poop, don't worry," she adds, and this time Lena _does_ shiver, just from the certainty with how she says it. "I can want to have sex with you and want you to be happy at the same time, it's not so hard. I can also recognize when waiting is better, okay? We can wait. I'll wait for you."

"Okay," Lena says, letting Kara hold her, letting herself relax, letting herself be a lily on Kara's pond, being carried by her ripples. "I just, sometimes need to be reminded. Not about sex exactly, but that you still like me."

It feels so dumb the second it leaves her mouth, so stupid and vulnerable and it makes the tips of her ear light ablaze in an apocalyptic flame because Kara's just this girl she's only starting to get to really know, but. It's the truth, and Kara says it's good to be open about that. _She's always right_, Lena thinks, and decides she'll unpack why that's wrong when she wakes up. 

"Okay," Kara says. "Not to brag, but I sort of think I was born to do that."


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's been so long but it feels so good to be writing this again. thanks, everyone, for all the feedback and everything else with this story. really appreciate y'all.
> 
> anywho, as always, hope you enjoy! x

**Saturday, November 2, 2019**

Lena doesn't have any regrets in life, not ever, but she does regret leaving Metropolis before her body actually left Metropolis.

She regrets releasing those documents with no real plan for herself. She regrets messing things up with Sam and looking desperate in front of Kara and fucking up again and again and _again_, and _god_, truthfully, she probably has more regrets than she has anything else. But she doesn't regret being here. Not _here_, exactly, because sitting in the dark on the floor of Kara's bathroom isn't where she wants to be or _plans to stay_, but _here_ in Midvale. She doesn't regret being in this town or in this house or with Kara, even.

It feels right. It feels so fucking right she doesn't know what to do with it other than to just... accept it.

It's always like a surprise party anytime someone shows they care about Lena. It's like she's coming home and thinks she's alone, turns on her living room light and suddenly there are _people_. Her first instinct is to run away from it as fast as she can, block herself behind walls with no exits until she's suffocating and desperate and has to smash her way out. It's so foreign it's terrifying, so far away from familiar that it takes a second to remind herself that her _familiar_ has never been a good thing. The only thing she's ever known is how to not be good enough, but being here with Kara, it's like--it's just different.

Kara _doesn't_ feel like a surprise party, and that's what catches Lena off guard the most. Kara feels like socks on hotel hallway carpet, like something comforting and familiar in a space that's as far away from _home_ as it gets. She feels like something that makes Lena want to _be here_, makes her want to _stay_, makes her want to stick around and figure out what it's like being _worth it._

She gets off the floor, eventually.

It's a struggle in itself just standing, but she manages to brush her hair and wash her face, even moisturizes and swigs enough mouthwash her cheeks feel raw. Then she hunches over the sink cupping water into her hands, gulping it in without breathing until it's making her feel _more_ nauseous than anything else, and then she just. Gives up. She feels like shit and nothing she can do will make it better. And maybe there's something about_ life lessons_ in there but her brain is too busy hurting to figure out what that's supposed to be.

Kara's waiting for her when she walks out, legs crossed on the bed with her hands in her lap. Lena's instinct is to be the first to say something, get out in front of it, lead the conversation. But she doesn't. She just nibbles her lip and rubs her thumb over her palm, willing her shoulders to relax as she sits in the silence. Kara doesn't look angry or even disappointed, and it's surprisingly easy to find solace in that.

"How are you feeling?" she finally asks, several long seconds later, and Lena's body reacts to her voice like it's a warm blanket after being out in a storm too long. "I mean, I'm guessing not good, but um." She pauses. "Sorry, that was probably a dumb question."

"No, it's okay," Lena says, as soft as she can manage, because Kara seems shaky and Lena doesn't want her to be. Not in her own house, at least. "Are you nervous?" she asks. "Am I making you nervous? Being here."

"A little bit," Kara says, and then she rubs her palms on her pants. "Sorry, I don't know why. I guess I just don't really have a plan."

"I can go," Lena offers.

"No, I don't want that," Kara says fast, shaking her head. "If you want that, it's okay, but it's not what I'm asking."

"I don't know what I want," Lena admits. "I just know I don't have a lot of options."

"This is an option as long as you need it," Kara says, and she means it. Even all the self-doubt living beneath the surface of Lena's skin believes Kara when she says that. "We have the space, so. It's not a problem."

"But after that?"

"We don't have to think that far ahead, plenty of stuff for us to do today, right?" Kara asks. "Like, right now you probably want to have a shower? I could get you set up for that."

"I'm in your house."

"I know."

"We should have a plan more extensive than me taking a shower."

"I know, but. We'll get to that eventually," Kara says, tilting her head like she's amused, like this whole situation is something to laugh at. Lena wants to press the issue, but instead she finds herself returning the smile Kara gives her. "You're in my house."

Lena rolls her eyes, dropping her head as she huffs out a laugh. "Yeah, I'm in your house."

"If you'd asked me a couple of days ago--"

"I know," Lena cuts her off, because she's not super fond of bringing up the past few days. "But, we're here now, so."

"Yeah, we're here," Kara says, sweet enough it gives Lena butterflies. She's a drill and an onion and a hill Lena's willing to die on, except she's not sure she's ready to admit that yet. To Kara or herself or anyone else. "Shower, then?"

"Yeah, shower. That sounds good." Lena sighs. "For now, at least."

"Actually, you know," Kara says slowly, thoughtfully, nibbling her lip in a dumb, attractive way that Lena doesn't appreciate. "I think I do have a plan for after the shower. If you're up for it."

"Eating?" Lena asks. She's starving. Maybe she did take a massive poop before she ended up on the bathroom floor. "I could go for that."

Kara smiles like she _knows_. Lena rolls her eyes again; she hates it. "Yes, but we need to go to the grocery store first."

"That sounds so--" Lena starts to say, then she sucks in a long breath and just takes in how _peaceful _it sounds. She doesn't know what happens next. With her. With Kara. Where this is going. What this is _about_. But it feels good to think about something starting instead of ending for once. Instead of being put on pause or hurting or coming to some sort of cataclysmic stop. "It sounds so ordinary."

"I think we could use a little bit of that," Kara says, smiling as she blinks _one-two-three_ times before she licks her lips and her face shifts enough to make Lena's back tense. "I think we've both seen some _not so pretty_ sides of each other these past few days, so. There's a little room for ordinary, don't you think? Because I could really use something less eventful right now."

"I'm sorry," Lena says.

"I am too," Kara says. "But, it's a new day and it's all behind us."

"It's technically the _same_ day," Lena smiles.

"Potato, tomato," Kara says, face lighting up like she finds herself positively hilarious. "I'll get you a towel and something to change into."

"Sure, okay," Lena agrees, and lets her shoulders relax again.

Maybe the most exciting part of this whole thing is finally figuring out that Kara's body wash is, in fact, a Men's 3n1 called _Titan_ from _Bath and Body Works_. Maybe the most exciting part is Lena using half the bottle on her hair and body and face, scrubbing her skin until it's sensitive and raw and the scents imprinted on her like it's a part of her DNA.

She stumbles out of the shower forty minutes later, shivering since the water went cold at least ten minutes ago, but it felt so good she didn't want it to end quite yet. Then she towels herself dry, wraps her hair up, and jumps into the joggers Kara gave her.

She's just about to slip the t-shirt over her head when she sees the flannel hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Her first thought is that she'd rather wear _that_ instead, and her second thought is to not let herself overanalyze what that means.

So, she grabs the shirt from the hook without thinking twice about it and lifts it up to her face to smell it. It's mostly a reflex, a habit she's picked up the past couple weeks since she doesn't have consistent dry cleaning. Sometimes she needs to wear something twice or can't figure out if she's already worn it _once_, so she sniffs it to check if it's clean and doesn't really think about it beyond that.

It's a terrible fucking mistake, though.

All at once, her lungs are filled-up with Kara Danvers. It's like her scent but _enhanced_ somehow, concentrated and overwhelming and jesus _fucking christ_, Lena just stands there and sucks it in for a second, breathing so deep her belly aches from the contraction, hands shaking, ears stinging with heat. She feels like she's officially lost her shit, but she doesn't _care_, just wants to drown in this shirt forever and feel unashamed about it. So, she just breathes and breathes and breathes, taking in the faint smell of the _3n1_ and probably Axe spray, and the hint of deodorant and outdoors and the slight musk of sweat and wood and whatever else. It's like every smell she's ever smelled on Kara before all wrapped up into one and she doesn't want to put it down or stop smelling it or _stop holding it_.

Before she knows what she's doing or fully processes what's happening, she puts it on, buttons it up, unwraps the towel, and fluffs her still-damp hair. Then she checks her reflection, tells herself she's looked worse in front of Kara, and she walks out of the bathroom.

"You know, that's not the shirt I gave you," Kara says, inching the cart forward in the spice aisle. She scrunches her hand through her bangs like she's nervous, and Lena thinks, dumbly, about running her own hands through how soft her curls look. "Just thought I'd point that out."

"This one smelled better," Lena tells her, shrugging because it _did_, and Kara flushes so red it looks uncomfortable.

"I um, wore that shirt to work maybe the day before we met," she says meekly.

"Well, you told me to be honest with you, or something, so I said what I said, and I meant it."

Kara's laugh falls out of her, and it only takes a second before Lena's laughing, too. "I appreciate your honesty, but no one said you had to give me a heart attack in the process. It's hard enough knowing you're using my body wash and wearing my _washed_ clothes."

"You should really keep your _me-in-your-clothes_ fetish in check, you know that. Alex said no getting your heart broken."

"So, you're going to break my heart?" Kara asks, and Lena's chest aches for all of the two seconds it takes Kara to follow it up with, "I guess that's a chance I'm willing to take. No pain, no gain, right?"

"Something like that," Lena says, biting her lip. "Do you have a plan beyond the grocery store?"

"Besides cooking dinner?"

"Besides you taking off work to babysit me," Lena says, as casually as she knows how, pulling her sleeves over hands. "Just wondering."

"It's not like that," Kara says, eyes glistening when she looks at Lena like she's trying to hammer in she means it. "I think I could _use_ the time off, and if you want to hang around the house together, that'd be great. If you want to do your own thing, that's fine too."

"Just promise I'm not a project for you," Lena blurts. "I mean, you seem like the kind of girl that needs to fix things. No pun intended."

"I promise you're not a project," Kara says right away, and it actually hits Lena in a place where she believes it.

This whole thing feels dangerous, like she could be destroyed right here and now if Kara said the wrong thing, but it also feels intoxicating. Like this is the salvation she's always needed, wrapped up in button-downs and fluffy bangs and sturdy hands. "If it starts to feel that way, I'm out. I just--I really appreciate all you're doing, but I can't do _that_."

"No, I get it," Kara tells her, then she smiles, and Lena lets them go back to ordinary.

"So, what are your plans?" Alex asks. She's dicing chicken and Kara's making a salad, and Lena's nursing her third glass of water as she fights the urge to go pee again, leaned against the counter as she watches them. "Not as an intimidating question, just have you thought about it?"

"I haven't," Lena admits, but she _does _have last-ditch options, she thinks. If she's piecing through her drunken haze correctly, then Sam knows where she is and so does Andrea. She can get pity money from one, and maybe guilt the other, but she doesn't want to let her mind go there yet. "I think my first plan is to see the house," she decides, and when Kara perks up, she adds, "At some point. I don't know if it's a great idea right now, but maybe soon. I want to work up to it, at least say goodbye before I let it go."

"You don't want to keep it?" Kara asks, and then she winces like it's already her reflex to withdraw when she feels like she's said the wrong thing around Lena. Lena doesn't say it out loud, and doesn't want to, but her second plan is to change that. "I mean, I really wouldn't mind working on it. Fixing it up, so maybe you could sell it if you want to let it go, anyway."

"Mostly, I'm just afraid of what it'll bring back," Lena says, thumbing the condensation on her glass and trying her best to hold Kara's eye contact. She can't, though, not really, not when Kara always has so much raw _feeling_ in her eyes. "I just don't know. It's also not my plan to leech off you forever, I just--" She pauses and sucks a long breath, because the last thing she wants to do is admit in front of Alex that she wants--no, _needs_, probably--to stay here. "I think it'd help a lot if I could stay here for a little bit, but I get it if you feel like I'm in the way."

"You're not in the way," Kara says instantly, and Lena doesn't know the best way to appreciate that about her without taking advantage of it. "I mean, that was the whole reason for inviting you. It seems like you could use some support and we're happy to be there for you."

Lena lets silence settle between them just to see if Alex wants to add something. When she doesn't, Lena sighs, but she supposes that's better than being outright kicked out. "If it stops being okay, just let me know. I don't want us to do the whole passive-aggressive thing."

"We'll let you know," Alex finally says, and Lena goes back to staring at her water.

When she looks up a few seconds later, she finds Kara staring at _her_, and for some reason, she's _smiling_. So, Lena takes a deep breath and then she's smiling, too. "You're gonna love Alex's cooking," Kara says. "You'll love the garden, too. I can show you tomorrow."

"That sounds like fun," Lena agrees, twisting her glass in her hands. "That sounds like a lot of fun, actually."

"Yeah, it's where I always go to clear my head," Alex says, then she looks at Lena and doesn't quite smile, but something close to it. "Get over here, though. Chop some vegetables, help out. You can at least be an extra set of hands."

"Don't be a butt," Kara laughs, and Alex actually _smiles_, and Lena sets her glass down to find a knife. She doesn't know what she expected coming to Midvale, but it feels like she's found something better.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm on [TUMBLR](https://valkyrieskwad.tumblr.com/) and [TWITTER](https://twitter.com/VaIkyrieSquad). Come hang out with me!

Lena wakes up to the sun shining and the smell of breakfast, and a strong wave of early-morning catharsis washing over her as she blinks up at Kara's ceiling and sinks heavily into her mattress. 

She feels okay.

She's not ready to take on Lillian or get back to demolishing capitalism, but she's also not in a _Bell Jar_ kind of mood, and it's been a long while since she could say that. She just feels okay, unremarkably, and feeling okay is freeing up a lot of space for her to finally _think_.

So, for just a few minutes, she has the luxury of looking at her life without the depressed _blue_ filter casting shadows on everything, and a part of her starts to realize that taking on Lex wasn't _just_ self-preservation, that coming to Midvale wasn't _just_ a last-ditch effort, that emailing Sam and latching on to Kara and putting herself out there openly and honestly aren't _just_ things she's doing because she has nothing left to lose. There's a part of her starting to realize that everything she's done this past year has been her admitting she _wants_ to be happy.

She's wanted a lot of things in her life—comfort, security, love—but happiness has never been one of them. It's always been elusive and unachievable, and she thought she locked the part of her that craves it in one of the _many_ maxed-out storage units in her mind.

But here she is, with her sixty-eight dollars and her fucked-up past, telling herself that even if she keeps failing... at least she's _trying_.

-

"Fortunately, I think you'll live," Kara smiles, thumbing lavender salve over the scrapes on Lena's palm, the flakes and peeling, raw skin that she got from the fall she barely remembers yesterday.

The whole thing feels like it happened six lifetimes ago, but she still has the shame and the migraine and the aches to prove it hasn't been _too_ long since she last made a fool of herself. The good part is that it all seems a little less significant right now, 24 hours and several conversations later, while she's standing in the cramped bathroom with Kara trying hard not to think about the fact that she'd give her last breath to be kissed or hugged or fucked right now.

"It's nothing to stop you from getting in the garden, at least."

"I wasn't going to let it," Lena says, forcing away the tug of her frown as Kara gently lets go of her hand. It's only for a second as she unrolls the wrapping, but Lena's finding that the only time she manages to think straight is when she's touching Kara or drowning in her clothes. She should maybe consider what _that_ means too, but the list of shit she needs to unpack just keeps growing, and it's a lot easier to focus on _other_ things at the moment. Gardening and thick, quilted blankets and the fact that it's dark enough at night around Kara's house that she can see every star in the sky. "You didn't have to sleep on the couch, by the way. I really appreciate it, but it's _your_ bed."

"I thought we were moving slow," Kara says, smirking as she folds the sleeve of Lena's button-down back, cuffing it up her arm. She's determined to be fucking insufferable however long Lena stays here, and Lena's already hopelessly endeared by it. "I know we napped together, but sleeping in the same bed every night is the exact opposite vibe of what we talked about."

Lena rolls her eyes, ducking her cheek against her shoulder to hide how flushed she feels. She wasn't even suggesting they sleep _together_, and part of her knows Kara's just teasing, but she still has to calm herself every time she remembers Kara's _interested _in her, that she said so in at least three different ways (which shouldn't be a big deal, but patience with herself and hydration are the only ways she'll survive today; at least that much is apparent. So, she won't question her thoughts on that, either). 

"I can sleep on the couch," she says slowly, looking up again, catching the way Kara nibbles her lip as she carefully layers the wrap on.

"It's okay," Kara says, more serious this time. "I just want you to feel at home."

Lena opens her mouth to respond, but freezes a bit, since she doesn't know how to say she _already_ feels that way and sleeping in a _bed_ has nothing to do with it. There's something inherently inviting about being here, right down to the _smell _of everything—the pancakes from breakfast, the plants strewn throughout the house, the underlying hint of vanilla and fresh linen, and body sprays they've used so many times it's built into the air now. This feels more like a home than any place she's ever been in. "You don't have to worry about that," she decides. "Letting me crash here is already more than enough."

"So, you'd feel better about this whole thing if I let you sleep on the couch. Is that what you're saying?"

"A little bit, yeah," Lena shrugs.

"Okay, well, m'not letting you," Kara says, finishing the wrap. "You'll just have to get over that. We can't always get what we want."

"You don't have to be this way," Lena groans.

"Don't be dramatic," Kara smiles, and she's just holding Lena's hand now, clasped between her own two. Every single piece of Lena wants to ruin the moment, wants to open her mouth and ask Kara _why she's sticking around_ again or say she _can probably find someplace else to stay_, but Kara must read it on her because her eyes soften enough to let Lena know she hears her without her saying any of it out loud. "Do you mind if I tell you something kind of weird, but also deeply personal and maybe too honest?"

"I can handle weird," Lena says, and just to reassure Kara, she adds, "I can handle deeply personal and honest, too."

What she can't handle, and doesn't expect Kara to say, however, is, "I used to think about you a lot," and just leave it there, floating between them, eyes wide and clear and too fucking _blue_ as red floods across her cheeks—_a fire across the ocean_, Lena thinks, dumbly—before Kara blurts, a bit more flustered this time, "Well, I mean like, not _you_, exactly, but you: the girl from the story about the house. I used to make things up about you in my head, things about your life and who you were and stuff like that."

"Oh?" Lena asks. She's not sure what else to say, but after a few awkward, silent seconds she manages to ask the most on-brand thing she can think of at the moment. "Were they bad things?"

"No," Kara says, smiling again, breathing again. She says so much shit with her eyes it's starting to feel like they have their own secret language. She doesn't have to tell Lena not to worry when she can just blink it. "I only thought about good things."

"Oh," Lena says, a little different from her first _oh_ in ways her brain can't catalog right now. Kara feels like such a fucking anomaly, like hope and optimism are just these _things_ she packs in her morning lunch box right next to the sandwiches, and its apparently been a life-long experience for her. "I mean, I gathered you were a bit of an empath, but I can't say I'm not surprised you thought about the little girl from the ghost story and went, _i sure hope she's doing okay out there_, or whatever it is you thought."

"I guess I just related," Kara says, and Lena instantly feels shitty for forgetting Kara lost her parents, too. "Alex and I also really struggled to get along with each other when her family first took me in. So, when things got bad, I'd think about that little girl and where she must be and all her cool new friends and her great new family, and I don't know. I guess, if she was okay, then I could be, too. It got me through some hard times, and. It's really weird, I know," she adds again, smiling wider like she's embarrassed, "but I just wanted to say you're not some stranger, you know? Your _family_ is from here. People knew them. People knew your mom. People met you when you were a baby. They want to talk to you. They want to get to know you and _help_, and you don't have to feel like you're in anyone's way here. It's your home, too."

Lena isn't quite sure what to say to that, but she supposes Kara understands that too. So, since this whole thing started with sleeping arrangements, she goes with the smaller point Kara's trying to make, and says, "Okay, well, if you're fine sleeping on the couch, then I'm okay with that, too."

-

The garden is huge.

It's partially hidden from the road—by the house and tall trees, and the fact that it's backed-up by a forest—so it feels a bit like a punch to the face as Kara guides Lena through it. That is, if a punch to the face felt even remotely as _good_ as Lena feels right now.

It's all so fucking overwhelming, from the colors to the smell to the _calm_, to Kara explaining rainfall and planting zones as if Lena has a clue what she's talking about. "It started out as a hobby, sort of, like I was into birding and wanted a way to attract them, and suddenly, one day, I was a gardener. Alex, too. It's a bit addicting once you get into it, and a lifelong project. I feel a little like we're growing old together." She walks them by the border of the garden, lined with stone and large-leaf plants, then stops and folds her arms across her chest, studying Lena's face as Lena looks out at everything. "So, what do you think? She's the greatest thing I've ever done, so no pressure to be nice, but full pressure."

Lena chuckles, sucking in a deep breath of fresh air, then says, "Tell me about her. I need more details before I have an opinion."

"I was hoping you'd say that," Kara beams, unfolding her arms and clapping her hands together, face lighting up as she walks backward towards a section of different colored leafy plants. "So, Alex loves flowers, but I'm more into foliage—big, colorful, different textures, all of it—so its been fun finding a way to highlight both, you know? Making it a space where we both feel connected, like it's _our_ garden."

"It's truly beautiful," Lena comments, following Kara over. "It's probably about more than how it looks, though?"

"Well, a bunch of it _is_ how it looks," Kara explains. "I mean, you want it to look how you want it to look, but there are other things to consider, like the seasons where you live, what's best to plant, if you have a winter where you'll need to store certain plants. If so, how many of those plants do you want, and so forth. We ended up going with a lot of hardy plants and very few annuals, did a dry garden, too, vegetable and rock, and we don't really bother with pesticides or synthetic fertilizers or whatever _organic_ products are meant to be. We also, um—" she pauses and smiles so bright it makes Lena smile too, even though she's not sure why. "You keeping up?"

"I'm trying," Lena says, cheeks heating up more the longer Kara stares at her.

"You sure?"

"Shut up," Lena laughs, tucking her hands underneath her arms against the brisk wind. "Just keep talking, I'm following."

"You know," Kara starts, and Lena rolls her eyes immediately, because she knows whatever follows is going to be dumb. "You say I have a thing for you in my clothes, but you have this thing about listening to me talk. Like, if we're pointing out _things_."

"I'm going inside now," Lena decides, mostly joking but she turns toward the house for added measure, and nearly melts when Kara stops her by fitting her hands on Lena's waist and pulling her back against her chest. "Mmm," Lena hums, like a comfort reflex, closing her eyes as she presses against how soft and _warm_ Kara is, losing herself for a too-long second before she tries to recover with, "What was your whole thing about _vibes_ earlier? What kind of vibes is this sending off? It can't be the _right_ ones." 

"You were getting away, what was I supposed to do?" Kara asks, voice muffled against Lena's hair. Then she takes in a long breath—like she's breaking, like the smell of her shampoo on Lena is physically destroying her—and wraps her arms around Lena's belly to pull her closer. "I really like you."

"I know," Lena says, biting her lip so her smile doesn't break her face, because _she knows_. "I'm the star of your childhood fantasies."

"Lena, oh my god," Kara gasps, pulling away. Lena panics a bit, turning around fully ready to apologize, but Kara's smiling, beautifully flushed as she shakes her head and waves her hand in the empty space between them. "Do you know what this is right here?" 

"No, what?" Lena smiles, too big, but she can't help it.

"Room for Jesus," Kara deadpans. "Because we should always leave room for Jesus."

"I hate you," Lena laughs, and then Kara laughs too, and then they move to tour different parts of the garden.

Later, when they're picking out vegetables for dinner, Kara says, "I know you don't want to see the house, but do you want to talk about it?"

"I'm not sure," Lena admits, giving her chest a second to loosen, to realize that she's not being attacked and she doesn't have to be anxious, and if she really doesn't want to talk about it, she probably doesn't have to. The thing is, though, she wishes she _could_, that she had the words that keep failing to come to her when she tries to think about it but _can't_ think about it. She wishes she had an elegant way to say everything she wants to say, but she doesn't. So the closed-off part of Lena that loves storing things in boxes really doesn't want to say anything at all, but that very same part knows she's at full capacity and the only place for her feelings to go at this point is _out_, whether she has the right words for them or not. "It's kind of hard to describe, I guess." 

"You don't have to talk about it. I was just, like, offering," Kara says right away.

"No, but I want to," Lena assures her, and then struggles for a bit to find—maybe not the _right_ words, but—words that at least make sense.

Ever since her mom died and she became a Luthor and her entire fucking world crashed to the ground, she's felt a little like the second fork at the table: like in theory she has a purpose, but she exists for a course that no one wants to eat, and besides, doesn't everyone use the same fork for everything, anyway? She feels like no one notices her and coming here just hammered in that it _runs in the family_. Her mom was thrown out like last week's casserole and the biggest memory Lena has of her is her death, coupled with all the negative images Lillian painted of her over the years. It just feels like invisibility is in her DNA, like she didn't inherit the trait that makes other people care about what she wants. She's not seen. No one sees her, and no one saw her mom, and the only legacy either of them is managing to leave is being a ghost.

That house just feels like it reinforces everything bad Lena's ever thought, and she doesn't want to see it.

"Okay," Kara says slowly, and it occurs to Lena that she's been frozen for a while now, staring at her hands not saying anything. "Well, I figured out which house your mom grew up in, so. That's an option, too."

"Oh," Lena says, looking up, and the thought of that _doesn't_ feel as bad as the other one.

"Just, if you were interested," Kara clarifies. "I'm not trying to overstep or anything, I just. I don't know, I want you to see you have history here, but I don't know if you care to, or _want_ to look into anything about your family. But say the word and we can."

"Okay," Lena whispers, then asks, "Can I think about it?"

"Yeah, of course," Kara says, lifting the side of her mouth in a small smile, like a peace offering. "Um, a lot of gardening is about feeling connected—to a place, or maybe just a moment in time—so if you wanted to add a little piece of _you_ to the garden, I wouldn't mind. I could help."

"Okay," Lena says again, and then decides it might be best if she turned her mind off for a bit. So, she asks, "Can you tell me how you first connected?" and spends the rest of the afternoon listening to Kara talk.


	9. Chapter 9

Sometimes Lena feels like her relationships are perforated right from the start, like they're designed to easily come apart or be torn away from her without reason or warning. In a way, it's good: she's learned to not get too attached, to embrace the inevitability, to give enough of herself to _feel_ something, but not enough to have something ripped away when it ends. But she doesn't know if that's _really _a result of her learning from her shit past, or just the outcome of being fucked over so many times she has nothing left to give.

She thinks about things like that while she's staying with Kara and Alex. She picks through all the traits she's adopted as part of her _personality_—as a way to make herself feel badass and strong, she supposes—and tries to figure out what she's attempting to cover up with the self-platitudes and over-generalized _this is just who i am _statements.

Not surprisingly, there are a lot of things that come to mind all at once and in a hurry: It's not that she _doesn't_ care, she cares too much. She gets too attached. She gets hurt. She gets hurt all the time. She can't remember the last time she actually brushed something off her shoulder and moved on from it, despite frequently lying and telling herself she _has_. In fact, she's coming to realize that she lies to herself about things like that _all the time_, maybe because everything feels better that way. She's not sure of the exact _why_, but she knows she wants to be okay. She wants to live. She wants to make friends. She wants to be wanted. She wants to be needed. She wants to be loved. 

She wants too much and too little, and she's made up so much shit to cover up the fact she doesn't have _any_ of it, that she doesn't really know who she is anymore. She doesn't even know who she _wants_ to be.

Some days she thinks so much she just feels like crying, so she shuts her brain off instead. Then—like a reflex, like an impulse—she gets out of bed and fumbles through the house to wherever Kara's hanging out at the time, sighs to get her attention, and stares long enough for Kara to crack and give her a hug. It's worked every time she's done it for the past week-and-a-half, and Lena's thankful for that.

Today, Kara's in the kitchen. She's covered in flour, wearing a half-apron and a burnt orange sweater, and after she's given Lena a hug and a squeeze that both last entirely too long, she lands on the topic for the day: clafoutis.

"It's supposed to be made with cherries," Kara explains. "I mean, that's how Martha did it in her cookbook, but secretly—and don't tell anyone—I like to put _any_ kind of fruit in it."

"So _scandalous_," Lena says, leaning forward in her chair, placing her elbows on the counter of the center island and holding her smile until Kara's dumb grin has her full-on giggling.

"It is, _truly_," Kara adds, biting her lip through her laugh, swaying her hips as she turns back to the batter she's making. "I've used plums, pears, peaches, raspberries, you name it. And when I'm feeling particularly spicy, I like to mix fresh fruit with _dried_, throw in some dried cranberries with my cherries. It's delicious. Maybe I'll do blueberry for you today."

Lena presses her smile against her fist, but it's hard to hide when she's wearing it on her whole body. "That sounds incredible, it all does. I'd be happy with whatever you make."

"So agreeable these days," Kara comments, and Lena shakes her head, smiling even wider, watching the way Kara carefully adds ingredients like every little thing is important. "If you don't mind me asking, what was it today?" she asks, turning back around after a short pause. "I just want to check-in is all, make sure everything's good."

"It's okay. Same as yesterday," Lena sighs. She lets her shoulders fall. "More being honest with myself, calling out my bullshit. You know."

Kara frowns. "Honesty sucks, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, it's so mean," Lena agrees, pouting in a way that gets her a smile.

"Heck yeah, it is," Kara says, soft, validating. "The first time I admitted to myself that I probably _won't_ be shaped like Jennifer Lopez at her age, I was sad for a whole day. Haven't told myself the truth since then, to be honest," she adds, face serious until Lena rolls her eyes, and then she's laughing again. Lena is too. She always has to stretch her jaw after talking to Kara since Kara always has her smiling too much. She's putting off thinking about that until she _has_ to. "Seriously, though, it's hard, so. Be easy on yourself. Take some breaks."

"That's what I'm doing right now. Tell me more about _kla-foo-tee_," Lena emphasizes. "Do your thing, please."

"Of course," Kara says, batting her lashes. She's so sweet and so dumb, and Lena's more than a little bit enchanted. "It's sort of like a Dutch Baby or German pancake, or whatever you call it—which is totally my favorite Christmas-morning food, by the way—but it's even sweeter and has _fruit_. Not that you can't put fruit on a Dutch Baby," she adds, thoughtfully, "but like, I don't know, fruit is just a part of who clafoutis _is_, so it's different. And it's delicious, like I said, so it'll be the perfect treat for today."

"Okay, but just so we're clear—what you're saying is that we're making pancakes tomorrow? Big, fluffy ones."

"Exactly," Kara laughs. "You're starting to speak my language."

-

Lena's way too full by the time they make it out to the garden, but she wouldn't miss it for the world—being out with the plants and smells and insects, watching how intense Kara gets whenever she's focusing on something, how engrossed she is telling stories to the flowers. It's like there's a new thing to learn each day, something different to do, something important that needs to be done. Kara never comes out, looks at the garden, and decides _it's good as it is_; she's always on a mission, always has a well-thought-out game plan.

Lena just likes knowing she can be a part of it. Kara always gives her tasks _she can't mess up_, and then they spend a lot of time working in silence—which is surprisingly just as good as the time they spend together laughing.

"I want to prune some of the younger trees," Kara decides, and Lena just nods.

Kara's switched out of her sweater for an old, worn short-sleeved button-down, and Lena put on thick socks and gardening boots and remembered her gloves today. It's not exactly warm out, but it's also not cold enough they won't work up a sweat from moving around too much, so it's pretty nice weather for being outside. It also happens to be Lena's favorite and most hated time of the year.

She loves the weather and the trees and the smell of autumn, but she hates what comes along with the cold, dark nights—holidays she can never remember celebrating, sappy movies, constant reminders that she's never found _that family_, and maybe she never will.

She's getting a dark feeling in her chest when Kara laces their fingers together. "Come with me," she tilts her head. "Today you get to feel what it's like to shape something for the rest of its life."

"That sounds like something I can mess up," Lena says.

"It sounds like," Kara stretches out, smiling as her eyes do that glinty thing they do whenever the sun exists, from the moment it's up till the last second before it's down. "It sounds like it's something that will make a tree's life so much easier when it's all grown up. A little love, a little care, a little snip-snip and she's on her way to growing up big and strong and healthy. You can't say no to that, can you?"

"Fine," Lena gives in, and her smile feels like it grinds out of her, like it's tired the second it reaches her lips from knocking against everything it had to fight off just to get to the light. Kara smiles back like she gets it, though, and Lena thinks that may be what she likes about her the most: the fact that it always seems like she has the _time_ for whatever Lena's brain wants to throw at her. "I guess that's a pretty convincing argument. The beginning was rough, but you stuck it in the end. Talk me through it?"

"Okay," Kara chuckles, letting her head fall back. "They're right over here, let us adventure."

She starts with a lesson—about scaffold structure and primary branches, training trees from a young age to mimic what trees do in a forest—and then she ends with hugging Lena from behind, hooking her chin over her shoulder. They never talk about it and Lena doesn't want to, but sometimes they touch in ways that make her fluttery in more than one place.

"So, I just start cutting away?" she asks.

"No, you look at it first, take your time," Kara laughs, and there's something so different about it when it's against Lena's ear. "You have to be meticulous and picky about every single cut, because they all have the ability to change the tree's life, its growth."

"Okay," Lena says slowly, and the scissors suddenly feel heavy in her hands. She's never wanted that much power over anything. "What would you do first, then? Unless you just want me to kill your tree. I'm probably great at that."

"No no no," Kara says fast, nudging Lena forward playfully, finally pulling her nose out of her hair. "This one's been here a few years, so we can start taking off some of the temporary branches. The lower ones."

"Thank you," Lena chimes, looking the tree over for a good while before her eyes settle on the skinniest lower branch. "So, like this one?" she points with the scissors, thumping against it. Kara just hums and then she says _yeah_, and Lena knocks against her shoulder with the back of her head. "_Hey_, your eyes aren't even open."

"How would you know?"

"Because I can _tell_," she laughs. "Your voice does this thing. I don't know how to describe it."

"Alright, you got me," Kara says, clearing her throat and perking up. "Sorry, I always close my eyes when I touch you, not sure why."

"It's because you want to feel it more," Lena says automatically, and then they both sort of. Pause. For way too long. _God_. She made it awkward. Fuck. "I mean, scientifically—the brain can better appreciate physical stimulation when it's not splitting its efforts with visual stimulation. So, sometimes you can feel things better when you close your eyes. Like when you're kissing," she adds, for no good reason, then tidies it up with, "or whatever. Just stuff like that. Someone did a study on it not too long ago."

"That's, um, interesting," Kara says slowly. "Feel free to cut off any branch you want while I die of embarrassment."

"Wait no," Lena says, turning around as she lets the scissors fall in the grass. Then she takes a long breath and sighs, leans her head against Kara's shoulder. "What are we doing, again? Like, us? What are we?"

She can feel Kara giggling before she _hears_ it. "I think this is the fastest I've ever had the _what are we_ conversation, but I don't know. I just know I really don't want to mess this up."

"Me either," Lena says, keeping her head down because talking feels easier this way. "I was just thinking this morning that none of my relationships have ever been built to last. I don't know how to start one that is."

"I think, objectively, all of my failed relationships weren't built to last, either. So, same boat."

Lena looks up finally, and Kara's smiling too big for her not to do the same. "This isn't funny, I'm being serious."

"I _know_," Kara says, and then she closes her mouth, opens it again, and just leaves it hanging there until Lena pinches her. "_Ow_, sorry, I just. I think you're overthinking it, but like, in a very adorable way, you know? We should go back to the tree."

"Why? So we can just ignore talking about it until the wedding?" Lena asks, and Kara starts laughing, but her cheeks are _so_ red. Lena can't tell if she's flustered or nervous or what the hell is happening. "I'm serious, I want to kiss you, and I don't know what to do with that."

"Well, when you figure that out, let me know," Kara says, a bit more seriously. Lena opens her mouth to—protest? maybe, she's not sure—but Kara knocks against her and she stays quiet. "I know I said I wanted to wait until you're ready, and I meant it, but that's because it didn't feel like we were there yet. Or like, _I_ wasn't there, more accurately, I guess. I didn't know what I wanted or why I wanted it, but I'm clear now. And when you reach that point, it's definitely a conversation we should have, but there's no rush."

"That makes sense," Lena says, because it does, and Kara's right, and Lena's still not at the point of clarity that feels... _okay_, at least, _good_ at best. She feels like she needed to spiral after all the shit with Lex. And she did. She feels like she needed to hit the ground hard enough to shake her. And she did. She feels like she needed a little help getting back up, and Kara was _there_. And now—_god_, she'll always feel like the biggest work-in-progress to ever walk this Earth, but—she feels like she's solidly on her feet again, and she's ready to move in _some_ direction. "Well, I think what I _am_ ready for is seeing where my mom grew up. Because I _do_ want to know more about my history. If that's still an option?"

"Yeah, oh my god, of course it is," Kara says all in one breath, and she's smiling again, and it's _genuine_, and Lena fucking _needs_ that. Much more than she can ever put into words. "We can just walk by it, or I can call the owners to go inside, whichever you want." Lena opens her mouth to respond, but after a few seconds of nothing, Kara squeezes her waist and says, "I'll plan for both, and it's whatever you're feeling, okay?"

"Okay, that sounds good. Okay, um, okay," Lena repeats, then she sucks in a long breath and, more than anything, she feels ready to finally move forward. "Let's chop up this tree, then. Set her on the right path."


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi all! it's been a while since i talked about how much i appreciate you, so here it is again :p thanks so much to everyone following along/leaving feedback. i'm glad you're enjoying this story as much as i do!! thanks so much for the support <3
> 
> as always, hope you enjoy (8

Lena doesn't know what time it is when she stumbles out of bed, disoriented and cold, but she knows she's as hungry as she is groggy.

It's dark all around her, but she acclimates to it fast, which feels inviting somehow, like she's been in this house long enough to avoid the hard edges of the furniture even with the lights out and her brain too fucking foggy to think straight. She opens the bathroom door and splashes some water on her face, just to make sure she's awake enough, then she finally sneaks out of her room for food.

A cold breeze hits her a few steps out, which is new, but it's only a few seconds before she realizes why: the large double windows facing the deck out back are open, and there's a voice coming through them. Alex must be outside on the phone with Kelly. Lena doesn't want to disturb her, so she's trying to figure out the fastest way to make a sandwich and go, when she hears Kara's voice too, also outside.

She feels torn. She should probably just grab all the sandwich material and speed back to make it in bed, or turn around and go back to sleep because their days are so long, or she could. Walk closer _just_ so she can make out what they're saying better. No, that's rude. They invited her into their home, and they've been so nice about it, and those _actions_ speak way louder than the negative words Lena's cooking up in her brain right now. Besides, they're most likely not even talking about her. 

She shakes the thought away, and then she absolutely starts toward the kitchen with the intention of grabbing her sandwich, but the closer she gets, the more she hears—and then she hears her name, which is. Great. She really can't win here.

"It's not a _big deal_," she hears Kara press. If she got any closer, she could stand on the tips of her toes, catch the tops of their heads sitting in the chairs underneath the window. "She likes doing it, and we could both use the extra hands, you know? We were letting it go to crap."

They're probably just discussing the garden. It's not even interesting. Lena should go. "Right," Alex says, sounding doubtful. "Remind me again, when's the last time you changed your garden routine, or shared it, or invited someone to even _see_ how it looks?"

"That's not the point," Kara mumbles.

"No, the point is that Kelly gifted us an electronic rain gauge two years ago, but you still dip your pinky in an old pan like a cavewoman," Alex says, almost like she's smiling. Lena smiles too, but she's not sure why. Maybe because that just sounds so much like Kara. "You've been nothing but a grump for a few years now, and suddenly you're baking _pies_."

"It wasn't a pie," Kara defends.

Alex just sighs. "You've changed so much since she came here, and I'm not even sure you notice it."

"I notice it," Kara says, and Lena feels like melting, like if her heart were beating any louder they'd be able to hear it.

Alex clears her throat. "So, like, why now? Why with her?"

"I don't know. Maybe—I guess it's a bunch of different things at once, but mostly it's because she made me feel so small," Kara finishes quietly, unexpectedly, and Lena's chest constricts like the aftershock to a punch.

It must hit Alex in a similar way. It's a few seconds before she asks, "So you're like, trying to prove to her that you're not? That you're worth it?"

"No, not like that," Kara says right away, and Lena nearly lets herself take a breath, but every single inch of her feels like a shoe is about to drop. "It's hard to describe, but. Sometimes I feel like I messed my life up. I've felt that way for a while now, and I've been holding on to so much anger and regret and blaming everyone around me for it. But I don't know—when I walked out of the bar and saw her with Mike, I just felt so insignificant, like I couldn't breathe, like my whole life was sitting in front of me and there was just. Nothing."

"Call me crazy, but I can't figure out how that's a good thing," Alex says, and Lena can't either. She should probably start packing now, but where would she go at this point? She still doesn't have anything, still isn't any closer to figuring her shit out.

She didn't want to make Kara feel small, she just wanted to feel okay. That's all she's ever wanted.

"I know, I'm just saying this terribly," Kara chuckles, almost like she's nervous. "I don't think she was trying to, or wanted to, or meant any kind of harm, honestly. I think she just felt small, too. And, like, I can't even imagine what it's like to lose everything on the scale she did. I can't imagine going through life and never feeling safe. I can't _begin_ to imagine _anything_ she's going through, but she's out here still trying in a world that's only ever hurt her, you know? She stood up to her brother. She moved across the country; she's making _friends_. Well, I mean, sort of—she was absolutely terrible at it at first, but god she's _trying_. She makes me feel like it's safe to try and fail and try again. She made me feel small but _hopeful_. She's like, chaos wrapped in chaos wrapped around good vibes somewhere underneath it all."

"Good vibes?" Alex laughs, and Lena laughs too, but it awkwardly feels more like crying. "Well, yeah, I guess," Alex sighs after a second, long and warm. "She does have good vibes. But only like, once you _really_ get to know her. She's a little prickly before that."

"She's very prickly," Kara comments. Lena perks up again. "But then she's _soft_, suddenly. It's like she gives you nothing and then she gives you everything," she half laughs, and Lena wants to say out loud it's because she's a golf ball, but she feels too nervous to let anyone know she's here. "Sometimes I just want to shake her and tell her, _you'll get hurt being this way_, but I think she already knows that. I just want to be different."

"Oh my god, stop, you're getting sappy. You don't even know if she likes you back."

"Of course she likes me back," Kara says, like she's confident about it. Then, with less confidence, she says, "I mean, I think she - well, she hasn't like, said it super concretely, but like. Okay, not _those_ words in that order, maybe, but she _did_ say—"

"I'm gonna go get us more beers from the fridge," Alex cuts in, obviously giggling. "Hopefully you have that figured out by the time I return."

"Stop it," Kara laughs, and Lena just _knows_ she's blushing. "She likes me, I swear. I think it's just up to me to make her feel like that's okay. Which, it is. So, go get you beer, and me _wine_, thank you, and stop judging me already."

Lena stumbles back to bed so fast she nearly trips four times.

-

Contrary to what Lena was starting to believe, Kara in fact _hasn't_ completely abandoned her job. She apparently handles technical things with the store in the morning before Lena wakes up, and she's even found a way to get herself a big project booked. In National City. Lena can't be a beggar and a chooser and a pouter when it comes to Kara and her livelihood. But she also _can_ be, and she can't help herself right now.

"I'm just doing some steel edging for a hotel garden. It'll only be a few days," Kara explains, tugging Lena's chin to pull her lip from poking out. They're sweaty and smell like outdoors and picnicking in the grass for lunch, and Lena feels like the real world is finally starting to penetrate her happy bubble. She's put off seeing the house her mom grew up in for over a week now, so maybe that's why Kara's moving on to taking jobs. She pouts again. "Alex doesn't bite, I swear," Kara laughs, "and you've gotten the hang of doing things in the garden."

"I thought it'd be you and me forever," Lena jokes, just to watch the way Kara's eyes twinkle when her smile widens.

"Unfortunately, one of us has to have more than sixty-eight dollars to keep the castle afloat."

Which reminds Lena: there's maybe something that _she_ needs to do in National City. Whether she's ready to or not. "What if I came with you?" she asks quietly. "Not to get in your way or anything, but. It might be good or something."

"To National City?" Kara hesitates.

Lena frowns. "You don't think it's a good idea?"

"No, I just didn't expect you to ask, is all. It's a little bigger than Midvale. People might be more interested in who you are."

They will be, Kara's right, and if Lena thinks about that too hard she might back out it, so she won't. She needs to do something about this now month-long pit stop she's taken with her life. Not that she thinks it's been an insignificant time period, or that she hasn't made strides with her mental health, or gotten some of her emotions in check, but she can't live the rest of her life draining the resources of everyone around her. She's not too big to accept a handout, but it's also not in her DNA to not want to give back. She's just not programmed that way.

"I know, but I don't mind any of that. As long as I'm with you," she starts, then stops, then realizes it's too late to back out of the statement.

"Okay, come with me, then. When m'not doing the edging, we can hang out and go everywhere together." 

"I'm not saying I can't be by myself—"

"I _want_ to go everywhere with you," Kara insists, leaning into her. "I have all these little food places and shops I used to _adore_. Would love to show them to you, feed you some of the best food you've ever—_umph_—"

That's like music to Lena's ears. She nearly tackles Kara over with a hug. Then, panic sets in. "What if someone takes a picture of us and talks about you online? I don't want to drag you into that."

"It's fine. People think I'm adorable, it's a thing."

"That's not what I meant," Lena smiles, pulling off and sitting on her heels. "Like, what if they say not good things or that we're dating or, I don't know. You never know what sort of story they'll spin, and it isn't always great."

"I couldn't care less," Kara shrugs. "I own a hardware store and I garden and sometimes I bake cakes for girl scouts to sell to fund new uniforms. The only thing lost with articles about me is their time."

"Don't say that like it's nothing," Lena says, and just to clear things up from what she overheard the other night, "I really like you, so don't downplay all those very cool and interesting things about yourself. You'll be the talk of the city, hashtag garden bae."

"Hashtag you _like_ me," Kara teases.

Lena rolls her eyes, laughing. "Hashtag that wasn't a secret."

"Hashtag I want to kiss you, too," Kara says, "just for the record and whatnot."

"Hashtag do it," Lena challenges.

"Hashtag um," Kara blushes, then, "Wait, really?"

"Yeah, I mean, if you want," Lena says, voice airy, suddenly nervous and hot and jittery.

Kara's eyes widen like she expected more opposition than that. In a second she's on her knees and shuffled close in front of Lena. "Maybe just a little one, to like, just, so um. We can do it."

Lena isn't sure what she means, but she straightens up for it. "Alright, then, sounds good."

The kiss barely lasts two seconds, but it takes Lena's breath away. It feels like kissing someone in the hallway at a birthday party in elementary school, like her own lips never prepared her for how soft someone else's could feel, like she'll be thinking about it for the next six days, like she's glowing, like she's changed somehow just from that. "That was good, right?" Kara asks, like she's really not sure. "It felt good."

"Yeah, it was good," Lena confirms. "It wasn't even—" she shakes her head, can't help her smile spreading. "I don't know, but it was good."

-

Lena steals Kara's phone once Kara's fallen asleep, and then she sits on the floor of the bathroom, staring at the number pad on the screen until her eyes start to glaze over. She has the digits she needs to dial memorized, but she can't bring herself to do it. She doesn't know how to invite her old world into her new one and keep surviving. She doesn't know if any of the progress she made is real or if it's just a fluke being in this house. She doesn't know how she's going to handle the future, or how she's supposed to, but for some reason it just keeps coming.

She supposes the only way to face these things is head-on, so.

She dials the number. She's about to hang up three rings in, but finally Jess answers the phone. Lena's voice feels like it's trapped in her throat, so. She just sort of. Breathes. On the line. "Ms. Luthor?"

"Just Lena," she breathes out. Her heart is pounding. "Hi, Jess. I hope you're doing well. You don't work for me anymore, I know, but—"

There's no hesitation when Jess asks, "What do you need? Anything."

Lena relaxes, sinking against the wall like hot clay. "I hate to call you out of nowhere for this, but I need you to set me up a lunch with Andrea Rojas three days from now. I need you to be discreet about it if you can."

"I can do that," Jess says, and Lena can hear all the questions in the air that she doesn't ask.

Lena's always loved that about her. "I'm okay, don't worry. A lot better than I should be. Just getting back on my feet."

"It's good to hear that, Lena." More questions.

"I know I've been adamant about declining to work with Obsidian in the past, but it's the only option I have left. However much I don't like Andrea, she wasn't mentioned once in all the shit I found on the servers. Guess she's doing good business."

"I'm glad to hear that," Jess says, then, "You have friends. We're out there."

"Thanks," Lena whispers.

She can't really sleep once the call is over, so she wakes Kara to make hot chocolate.

-

The first step Lena takes in downtown National City is full of panic. She looks around and there are more people than plants, more concrete than grass, and suddenly it's hard to breathe. Her chest feels too fucking tight, so she grabs Kara's hand just to stable herself.

At least that calms her nerves a bit.

Kara squeezes her hand and looks down from under her baseball cap. "You feeling okay?"

Lena feels even more soothed just hearing her voice. She nudges Kara's shoulder with her forehead. "Just need a second, warming up to everything moving so fast again. It's a little bit of a shock."

Kara must have taken the _as long as I'm with you_ seriously, because her immediate reaction is to step closer like she's shielding Lena from everything around them. It's just a street, a busy street, with strangers not even paying them attention. Lena _shouldn't_ be feeling this much anxiety, but her mom's old house suddenly feels a lot more welcoming. 

"I'm not scheduled to meet for another hour, but we can hide somewhere in the hotel if you want, maybe behind some of those large, decorative plants they keep by elevators. No one's going to notice you when you're not carrying a mustard dog."

"Oh my god," Lena laughs, shoving Kara but keeping her close. There's a thought. "Have you never had a hotdog with mustard before?'

"Obviously not, because I have taste," Kara frowns.

Lena rattles their hands and steadies her focus on Kara's eyes. They're the only thing keeping her calm. "We have a mission, then: to get you a hotdog with mustard, so you can finally recognize what brilliance tastes like."

"Lena," Kara says, more serious than Lena's seen her in the past month. "I never say no to food, but you're making me come close."

No way Lena's letting her out of this. "Come on, I didn't come to the city just so you could chicken out of eating a hotdog. I've seen you eat fruit from the garden without washing them off first."

Kara snorts. She seems to be considering that, but after a moment she gives in. "Fine, but only because you're forcing me into it."

"Whatever," Lena laughs.

Kara laughs too, then falls forward to wrap Lena in a hug. Lena's heart flutters.

There's a hotdog place quite close, apparently, so they grab one and find a bench to sit on in a small park area. Kara gives Lena her hat, so she feels more comfortable with the people walking by. She doubts anyone even recognizes who she is, but it's nice to have Kara.

"So," Kara starts, taking the foil off her hotdog so slow it'd be amusing if Lena weren't impatient. "We have a few days, if there's something specific you want to do. I mean, other than being a mustard bully, of course."

"Just _eat_ it," Lena begs, tilting her head.

"I am," Kara assures her, "but I'm trying to like, be romantic, if that's okay."

"Oh," Lena perks up. _Oh_. "I have a meeting today while you're scheduled to work, but other than that I'm wide open. So to speak."

Kara freezes a second, cheeks pinking up, but she recovers fast as she peels the last of the foil open. "Good, then. Because I want to show you something I think you'll like tonight." She takes a bite of the hotdog, and Lena's never seen her look quite so sad. But she chews it, slow and carefully, like each second it gets more painful, then she swallows so thick Lena actually feels a little bad. 

"We can trade," Lena offers. "I only put ketchup on mine."

"No, it's alright," Kara says, dejected, and then a second later she's smiling, and then she's giggling, and then Lena's smiling too. She always smiles when Kara smiles, like it's her natural instinct. "I'm just messing with you. It's actually not so bad. Tonight's going to be fun, though. I swear."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [TUMBLR](https://valkyrieskwad.tumblr.com/) and [TWITTER](https://twitter.com/VaIkyrieSquad). Come hang out with me!
> 
> <3


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